Why do people have dimples?

If a person has a pair of beautiful dimples, it is always enviable. After all, having a pair of dimples makes that person's smile seem a little sweeter to others. Some people even go for surgery in order to have a pair of dimples, which shows how popular dimples are among the public. So why do people have dimples?

When we smile, if the facial muscles move together and form a depression, that is a "dimple". However, some people call it "laughing dimple", or because of its location and size, it has another name "pear dimple". Not everyone has dimples, and those who have them may have different shapes, heights, and depths.

To break it down, the dimple is located about 2-2.7 cm above and outside the corner of the mouth. There are two types: round and linear. The dimple is usually most visible when smiling. There is another dimple on the face, called the pear dimple. The pear-shaped dimple is located about 1 cm below and diagonally outside the corner of the mouth. It is smaller and less obvious than the dimple. The formation of dimples is mainly due to genetics. If you want, you can have plastic surgery.

Dimples, also known as smile dimples, are a traditional symbol of oriental beauty. It goes without saying that the ancients admired and appreciated them. Even in modern times when there are so many beautiful women, girls with dimples are still the objects of affection for many people.

Dimples can be divided into three types: round, oval and fissure. Some scholars have conducted investigations and found that most of them are distributed in the cheeks and are also common near the corners of the mouth, while they are relatively rare in the zygomatic region and chin. The incidence rate of natural dimples among Oriental ethnic groups is 1:18, with 34.2% having one dimple, 59% having two, 5.6% having three, and 5.2% having four. 59.6% of people have one dimple on the left cheek. Most of the time, there are two dimples, and most of them appear on the cheeks, and most of them are asymmetrical on both sides.

Causes:

Dimples are formed by the movement of muscles just beneath the skin. Most of the muscles in the human body are firmly attached to the bones by tendon fibers, such as the chest muscles and lower limb muscles. The facial expression muscles are an exception. They are directly attached to the facial skin. When the facial expression muscles contract, they will affect the facial skin, causing various wrinkles to appear on the face, producing expressions of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness. The two dimples on a smiling face are formed by the relative movement of the facial skin and facial expression muscles such as the buccinator muscles and zygomatic muscles.

Whether you can have dimples depends on the development of your facial muscles. People whose zygomatic muscles are not so plump and who have less subcutaneous fat on their faces generally do not have dimples when they smile. In fact, dimples can also be created through surgery.

For some people, dimples are dominant.

Dominant inheritance means that as long as there is one dominant gene in a pair of genes, the determined trait will be expressed, even without being paired. For example, widow's peak and double eyelids are dominant inheritance. In fact, it can also be done later through surgery.

The 10 most common traits controlled by single genes in humans are: having earlobes or not having earlobes; rolling the tongue or not being able to roll it; having a widow's peak or not having a widow's peak at the hairline; the thumb being able to bend back toward the back or not being able to bend back toward the back; the index finger being longer than the ring finger or being shorter than the ring finger; the right thumb being on top or the left thumb being on top when the hands are chimeric; double eyelids or single eyelids; having dimples or not having dimples; normal feet or flat feet; normal color vision or color blindness; albinism or normal skin.

The above is an introduction to why people have dimples. For more content, please pay attention to the Ziwei Mansion’s special topic on physiognomy.