Applying the Golden Ratio to Your FaceYou may be wondering what all this golden section stuff has to do with cosmetic surgery? When your surgeon talks about improving or restoring the “harmony” of your features, he or she is referring, at least in part, to an instinctive reaction to the golden section—or the lack of it—that seems to be innate in humans.According to Sydney plastic surgeon Dr Steven Liew, universal beauty is associated with proportional curves derived from the golden ratio. Beautiful things are never square. There is always a subtle curve. Youthful faces that are full of volume are always curvaceous. Dr Liew sees beauty in faces that have an “Ogee curve”, a three-dimensional curve in the shape of an ‘S’ where one curve is ? times the length of the other. Putting an Ogee curve in people’s faces make older people look younger and younger faces more beautiful.“It is probably the most important concept that clinicians need to understand,” says Dr Liew. “Some doctors think they need to plump people up, but you don’t want to do this, because they will then look like balloons. You simply need to enhance the curve of their faces in certain areas. A good doctor is someone who can appreciate beauty, is able to assess what the patient requires, and more importantly, knows how to execute it.”According to Dr Liew, when we first look at someone’s face, our eyes and minds follow a highly sophisticated route. In a matter of nanoseconds we scan each face, looking at skin tone, skin colour and the overall picture. Then we scan from top to bottom and form a scale through which we judge beauty, unless something is conspicuous, like a large nose or lips that are out of proportion.