顴骨
Gwangol (Cheekbones, 顴骨)
The bones that give the face its width and relief, flanking the area below the eyes, are the cheekbones, gwangol (顴骨) in the traditional vocabulary. They catch light better than almost any other spot, so their share of the impression is large.
Old plates likened these two ridges to mountains; modern psychology recorded what expectations we pile onto a radiant-looking face. Read the two stories side by side.
Editorial markA plate for examining the names a culture placed on the face.
Location plate
Where the cheekbones sit
On the plate, the gwangol are the paired bony ridges below and outside the eye sockets, the zygomatic bones of anatomy. They set the relief of the cheeks and the sense of facial width.
Lit from the front, these ridges take the highlight and the face looks radiant; lit from the side, the shadows deepen and the same face reads stronger. One bone, entirely different moods by lighting.
- Plate label
- 顴骨
- Anatomical term
- cheekbones (zygomatic bone)
Name and tradition
East and west of the five peaks
The character 顴 simply means ‘cheekbone’ in the standard dictionaries. In the ‘five peaks’ (oak, 五嶽) chart that likened the face to five mountains, the left and right cheekbones are said to stand for the eastern and western peaks.
The old physiognomy is said to have talked of well-supported cheekbones as a sign of vigor, but that is the metaphor of a culture that read faces like mountain ranges, and cheekbone shape is not used to settle anyone's character or ability.
Psychology in contrast
The ‘beautiful is good’ illusion
In 1972 psychologists Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster documented the tendency to expect kindness and competence from appealing looks, naming it the ‘what is beautiful is good’ stereotype. It is a documented bias, not evidence that looks reveal the person.
A cheekbone catching the light is exactly where this bias likes to attach. The use of the study is the pause it buys you between ‘they look radiant’ and ‘they must be good’.
Texts and research
Sources for this plate
- Standard character dictionaries on 顴 (‘cheekbone’) and the Korean standard-dictionary gloss of gwangol
- The ‘five peaks’ (五嶽) face chart of traditional physiognomy, as customarily transmitted
- Dion, Berscheid & Walster (1972), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: the beautiful-is-good stereotype
Terms and further reading