Emotions play across your face hundreds of times a day through subtle movements and muscle contractions. Your eyebrows play a prominent role in how your mood and intentions are perceived. Your brow position can broadcast emotions you do not actually feel, leading others to perceive you as angry, exhausted, or disinterested. This disconnect between your internal state and your expression can create miscommunication and misinterpretation. For individuals seeking to correct this disconnect, oculoplastic surgery could be your solution. A brow lift can reposition descended brows, allowing your face to accurately portray your true emotions rather than rebelling.
Brow Position and Emotion
The eyebrows serve as a conduit for nonverbal communication. When someone raises their eyebrows, it is often interpreted as surprise, interest, or friendliness. Lowered or furrowed brows are an indication of anger, concentration, or displeasure. These are automatic interpretations triggered unconsciously in social interactions and day-to-day events. Ideally, the brow position sits slightly above the orbital rim for men and creates a gentle arch for women, with the highest point aligned with the lateral limbus. Brows that descend below these positions can give the face a look that can be interpreted as negative emotion, even though it has little to do with emotion at all.
Brow descent has many contributing factors. Gravity, loss of skin elasticity, weakening of forehead muscles, and repeated muscle contractions all pull the eyebrows downward over time. Sun damage and genetics play starring roles in this occurrence. Ultimately, it comes down to your lifestyle, biology, and environmental influences.
Consequences of Misread Expressions
When your resting face contradicts how you feel, your social interactions can suffer. You may seem unapproachable, causing others to avoid interacting with you because you seem irritable. Friends and family might take extra steps to avoid you because you seem tired or stressed. These misinterpretations accumulate, potentially affecting advancement at work, relationships, and experiences. It is common for patients to report frustration when explaining their mood or when their facial expressions are miscommunicated.
Surgical Solutions
A brow lift is a surgical procedure that raises the eyebrows back to their natural position. There are a few different ways your surgeon could choose to perform the procedure, depending on your circumstances. Whichever surgical technique your specialist uses, the goal is for the results to appear natural. Your surgeon should map out the right position for your face shape and features. Too much brow lift creates new problems rather than solving current ones. The result should be refreshed and approachable, not overdone or artificial.
Achieving Natural Looking Expressions
When brows descend, it can consistently send the wrong message about your mood and energy. Most may think this is of little import, but for those dealing with the consequences of lowering brows the impact is real. Many become discouraged, having to constantly explain that even though their facial expression says something, it doesn’t mean it is accurate. A brow lift addresses the root cause of this conundrum by repositioning tissues to raise your brow. Surgical correction aims to reposition your brow to its natural position, allowing your personality and emotions to be clearly expressed. If the misinterpretation of your expressions is negatively impacting your interactions with friends and family or makes you avoid social situations entirely, it may be time to consider whether brow repositioning could restore the connection between how you feel and how it’s displayed on your face.
Consult with one of our board-certified oculoplastic surgeons to discuss surgical solutions that work for you.