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Inherited features

Shapes and features people are born with. 53 face guides on EveryFaceShape so far.

Inherited features are the shapes and traits people are born with: face shape, eye colour, the eyelid crease or epicanthic fold, dimples, freckles, a widow's peak, a cleft chin, the Cupid's bow. They come from many genes acting together, along with growth and chance, and most do not follow the simple dominant and recessive rules once taught in schools. They vary within every population.

Many genes, not one

School textbooks long used dimples, cleft chins and widow's peaks as examples of single-gene traits. Studies show their inheritance is more complex: children of two dimpled parents may have none, and dimples can come and go with age. Eye colour involves many genes, with OCA2 and HERC2 playing large roles. Freckling is linked strongly to MC1R.

Features, not labels

Inherited features are found across many peoples. The epicanthic fold, for instance, is common in East and Central Asia, the Americas and parts of Africa, and in babies everywhere. Linking any feature to ethnicity, character or worth is not science. EveryFaceShape describes features simply as features, with how the sources say they are inherited.

Famous inherited features face guides

DimpleOften called dominant; inheritance is irregular

FrecklesLinked to MC1R gene variants

Widow's peakOnce taught as a single-gene trait

Epicanthic foldCommon in babies everywhere

Eye colorShaped by many genes

Cupid's bowFormed before birth

Further reading

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Epicanthic fold: Sarang, Public domain, source
Freckles: Loyna, CC BY-SA 2.5, source
Eye color: LeuschteLampe, Public domain, source
Dimple: C. Szeto, CC BY 2.0, source
Cupid's bow: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, source
Nasolabial fold: Mikael Häggström ,, Public domain, source
Widow's peak: Kuebi = Armin Kübelbeck, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
Zygomatic bone: Anatomography, CC BY-SA 2.1 jp, source

The weekly digest

Every Monday: the face guide of the day, new pages on EveryFaceShape, and the conferences and anniversaries of the week ahead.