Hairstylist Suki Duggan, owner of the Donsuki Townhouse Salon in New York, said more clients are asking for haircuts that will accentuate their cheekbones. "It used to be all about the long eyelashes or the full lips," she said. "Now, everyone wants high cheekbones."
And it's true, high cheekbones are on that list of features that make a beautiful face -- a list that is pretty universal across cultures and millenia.
"It's about proportion and expression, and something that happens in a secret language that your mind understands very deeply," says Dan McNeill, author of "The Face: A Natural History."
Where full lips are symbolic of sensuality and large almond-shaped eyes are a hallmark of classic beauty, high cheekbones signal youthfulness and radiant health. "What we're trying to replicate is youth," says Leanna Wolfe, a social anthropologist in Los Angeles, "and youth has to do with fertility and sexual attractiveness."
But Shari Graydon, author of "In Your Face: The Culture of Beauty and You," said the current obsession with cheekbones goes beyond classic anthropology.
"Frankly, it's likely to be more about the triumph of tabloid journalism and the saturation coverage of celebrities," she says. "This is all happening at a time when the beauty industry in general, and plastic surgeons in particular, are intoxicated by the possibility of being able to make over new and different parts of women's bodies."
