Short Chin vs Recessed Chin: What Is the Difference in Asian Faces?

People describe the same concern in many ways: a weak chin, a small chin, a short chin, a chin that seems to disappear in photographs. The words are used as if they were interchangeable. Anatomically, they are not.

A short chin is short in height: there is relatively little distance between the lower lip and the bottom of the chin. A recessed chin has relatively limited anterior projection. How recessed it appears also depends on its relationship with the lips, nose, jaw and the rest of the profile. Height is a vertical dimension. Projection is a forward one.

The two can occur together or separately, and a chin can be unremarkable in both and still look small. "My chin is small" is a description, not a diagnosis.

What is the difference between a short chin and a recessed chin?

A short chin has limited vertical height. A standard terminology for describing facial features, developed by an international group of clinicians, defines it as a decreased vertical distance from the lower lip to the lowest point of the chin. A recessed chin has relatively limited anterior, or forward, projection. Height is easiest to see from the front. Projection is easier to appreciate at an angle or from the side.

A chin also has width, which shapes how the lower face ends from the front. "Small" can refer to any of the three.

What is a short chin?

A short chin is a question of height, and height is relative. It is judged against the upper lip above it, the lower face as a whole and the length of the face.

Classical guidelines divide the face into equal thirds, but measurement does not bear them out as a rule. When Le and colleagues measured young Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai adults (60 in each group) and 60 North American Caucasians, the three sections of the face were not equal in any of the four groups, and a lower face smaller than the forehead height was among the features they described as characteristic of the Asian samples. These are averages from small samples, not a description of any individual face.

A short chin can still project well and look in proportion from the side. Its shortness shows mainly from the front, where the lower face can look compressed, and where a face that is short for its width can read as broader, as Why Does My Face Look Wide? explains. Clinically, the soft tissue of a short chin can also look gathered, with a deeper crease beneath the lower lip. That is a clinical observation rather than a measured finding.

What is a recessed chin?

A recessed chin has relatively limited anterior projection: its most forward point sits further back in relation to the rest of the face. That position can be described at three levels:

• Skeletal projection: how far forward the bony chin, at the front of the lower jaw, sits.
• Soft-tissue chin prominence: how far forward the chin sits at the surface, which reflects the bone and the muscle, fat and skin over it.
• Perceived profile balance: whether the chin looks in proportion with the lips, nose and jaw when the face is seen from the side.

These three do not always align. The visible chin reflects both skeletal and soft-tissue anatomy, and how balanced it looks depends on its neighbours as much as on the chin itself.

Limited skeletal projection can arise in two different ways. The bony chin itself may be underdeveloped or set back on a lower jaw that is otherwise normally positioned. Or the whole lower jaw may sit further back relative to the upper jaw and skull, taking the chin with it. Either way, a recessed chin may have normal height, or even be long.

Clinicians use several terms for these situations, and not always in the same way. Microgenia usually means an underdeveloped bony chin. Mandibular retrognathia means the whole lower jaw sits further back in relation to the upper jaw and skull. Retrogenia is used less consistently; some clinicians use it for a chin set back on an otherwise normally positioned jaw. The label matters less than the anatomy it is meant to describe.

A classification published by Guyuron and colleagues in 1995 shows why the distinction is useful. From photographs and standard facial measurements of 2,879 patients in one surgical practice, they identified 684 with chin dysmorphism and normal occlusion, meaning the upper and lower teeth met normally. Among them, 63.6% had microgenia. In 7.9%, the chin was excessive in one dimension and deficient in another. In 0.4%, a normal lower jaw had been rotated backwards by a long-face deformity, so that the chin appeared deficient (pseudomicrogenia). These are proportions within one surgical practice, not the prevalence of chin types in the population. What the classification shows is that chin shape can be abnormal while the bite is normal, and that a chin can appear deficient without being so.

A short chin is a question of height. A recessed chin is a question of projection. A chin that only looks small may be a question of neither.

Can a chin be short without being recessed, or recessed without being short?

Yes. Height and projection are separate dimensions, so four combinations are possible:

• Short but not recessed. Adequate projection, limited height. It tends to show from the front.
• Recessed but not short. Adequate or generous height, limited projection. It tends to show in profile.
• Short and recessed. Both are limited. This is often what people mean by a "small chin".
• Neither. The chin is within an ordinary range in both dimensions and looks small because of the face around it.

Why does my chin look small when it may not be?

Because perceived profile balance depends on what surrounds the chin.

The lips and teeth. Lips that sit forward, often because of the teeth beneath them, make the chin behind them look less projected. When the lips close over forward-sitting teeth with effort, the chin muscle (the mentalis) can tighten and flatten the surface of the chin. That is clinical reasoning.

The nose. A more projected nose sets a different reference for the chin below it. How the nose, lips and chin are read together is the subject of What Makes an Asian Face Look Balanced From the Side?

The height of the lower face. A longer lower face can rotate the lower jaw so that the chin sits further back, as in Guyuron's small pseudomicrogenia group. Height and projection are linked in this way.

The jaw and the neck. From the side, chin and jaw read as a single line. A short jaw, fullness beneath the chin or a soft transition into the neck can make the chin look less defined.

The width of the face. In a Korean study, 75 dental students rated three-dimensional images of broad, average and long faces of each sex, with chin projection varied in small steps. The normal projection was preferred for the average faces, a slightly more projected chin for the broad male face, and a slightly retruded one for the long female face. The faces were few and the raters young dental students, but the projection that looked right depended on the front view.

How does the chin shape an Asian face from the front?

From the front, the chin is where the outline of the face ends. Its height affects how long the lower face looks, and its width and shape affect how the outline narrows below the jaw.

Projection is hard to see directly from the front. It shows indirectly, in the shadow beneath the lower lip, the definition of the jawline and how the lower face reads at an angle. How the chin completes the outline is discussed in V-Shaped Face, and how the jaw above it shapes a square outline in Square Jaw in Asian Faces.

How does the chin shape the side profile?

From the side, the chin is read against the lower lip and the nose. The curved crease between lip and chin, the labiomental fold, deepens or flattens with the lip's position and the chin's height and projection. Further back, a chin of modest projection can still look well defined above a clean line into the neck, and a chin of ordinary projection can look weak above a soft one.

How can you tell whether it is the chin, the jaw or the bite?

This often decides who should be involved.

Skeletal jaw position describes where the lower jaw sits relative to the upper jaw and skull. Dental occlusion describes how the teeth meet. The two often go together, but not always. Teeth can compensate for the position of the jaws, so a set-back lower jaw does not always produce an obvious bite discrepancy, and a bite in which the lower front teeth sit well behind the upper ones can reflect the upper jaw or the teeth as much as the lower jaw.

Clues therefore point rather than prove. A normal bite, a jawline of ordinary length and a deficiency that seems confined to the front of the chin lean towards the chin itself. A lower face that seems set back as a whole, a short jawline from the side or a marked gap between the upper and lower front teeth lean towards the jaws or the teeth.

Soft tissue is the final layer, since the chin seen from outside is bone covered by muscle, fat and skin. Photographs may provide clues, but they cannot reliably distinguish every combination of chin morphology, jaw position, occlusion and soft tissue. Examination can suggest which is involved. Where the jaws or the bite may be responsible, an orthodontic assessment, with X-rays where appropriate, is the reliable way to tell.

Is less chin projection necessarily abnormal in an Asian face?

No. In some samples, Asian faces showed less chin projection on average, but those averages came from faces that had already been judged well balanced.

In the comparison of Korean and European-American adults with well-balanced faces, the Korean group had a less prominent chin and more lip protrusion. In the study of 48 Chinese adults with aesthetically pleasing profiles, the lips were more protrusive, the nose less prominent and the soft tissue over the chin thinner than in published white norms. The authors concluded that soft-tissue norms are specific to the population studied and cannot always be applied across groups.

So a chin that projects less than a European average is not, on that basis alone, a deficient chin. In the samples studied, it was part of faces judged balanced.

"Asian" is not one chin either. The studies cited here measured Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai faces. None measured Malay or Indian faces, and none describes the range of chins seen every day in Singapore. Findings from these samples provide population-level context. They do not define the appropriate chin for an individual.

Do classical facial proportions apply to Asian faces?

As descriptions, many are useful. As targets, none applies automatically. Equal thirds were not found in any of Le's four samples, and other classical canons were met less often in the Asian samples than in the Caucasian one. Profile lines such as the E-line, drawn from the nose tip to the chin, move whenever the nose or chin changes. A measurement can describe where a chin sits. It cannot, by itself, decide where that chin should sit, a distinction examined further in Does the Golden Ratio Apply to Asian Faces?

Does the chin change with age?

The appearance of the chin can change with age through changes in the surrounding bone, soft tissue and dentition. In CT scans of 120 Caucasian adults in three age groups, Shaw and colleagues found that the height and length of the body of the lower jaw were smaller in older groups and the jaw angle wider, in both sexes. The study compared different people at different ages rather than following the same faces, and it did not include Asian adults. A review by Mendelson and Wong identified the area just in front of the jowl, beside the chin, as one of the parts of the facial skeleton prone to resorption with age.

As support along the jawline loosens and the jowls descend, the chin can also look less distinct from the jaw beside it, a process with its own timeline. Changes in the teeth can alter the height of the lower face.

A chin that has always been short or recessed is a question of longstanding anatomy; one that has become less defined may reflect ageing around it. The two can coexist and lead to different decisions.

Does a short or recessed chin need treatment?

No. Neither is a medical problem, and modest chin projection is part of many faces judged well balanced. Where a change is wanted, the anatomy decides the options:

• Mild to moderate retrusion of the chin. Filler can add forward projection at the chin. In a manufacturer-funded randomised trial of Chinese adults with mild to moderate chin retrusion, 81% of those treated improved by at least one grade on a chin retrusion scale at six months, compared with 5% of untreated controls. The trial assessed retrusion, not vertical height.
• Limited vertical height. Whether height can be added, and how, depends on the bone, the soft tissue and the lower face as a whole. Filler is sometimes used for this where the anatomy allows, but that is a context-dependent clinical judgement, not a finding of the trial above.
• A more significant skeletal deficiency of the chin. Where the bony chin itself is markedly underdeveloped, a surgical opinion is appropriate.
• Jaw position or the bite. Filler does not change where the jaw sits or how the teeth meet. Adding projection at the chin can alter how the profile reads, but the underlying jaw relationship is unchanged, and an orthodontic or surgical assessment may need to come first.
• Surrounding anatomy. When the impression comes from the lips, the nose, the neck or the height of the face, the chin may not be where the answer lies.

Filler is a medical procedure with risks of its own.