Malar bones in close proximity to your eyes? Lucky you! For you, chosen one, are blessed with a feature so many covet; high cheekbones.
A trait that’s, in many cultures, considered a marker of ‘facial attractiveness’, alongside that fabled facial symmetry, a smooth forehead, and plump lips, there are countless articles online positing what having high cheekbones may say about you, from being sexually mature to possessing more trustworthiness.
We’re more inclined to concur with Healthline here, who insist that “Having high cheekbones or low cheekbones doesn’t necessarily indicate anything about you.”
That said, you may be seeking to elevate yours for a whole variety of reasons, and that’s cool, too. While generally considered to be a hereditary feature, even if you aren’t genetically blessed with well defined cheekbones, it’s increasingly easy to fake it. Do so with these, our 7 ways to highlight and countour your cheekbones.
Learn Where Your Cheekbones Are
If you’re not born with razor sharp cheekbones, then use cosmetics to your advantage. But before the how, you need to learn where to apply your makeup. Find what those in the trade call ‘cheek hollows’ or the shadow zone.
To do this, simply suck in your cheeks in then tilt your brush at a 45-degree angle and place it on your cheek bone – so from the top corner of your mouth to just where your hairline starts above your ear. Bingo. You can also locate your cheekbone by sucking in your cheeks and feeling it with your index finger; whichever works best for you.
Contour Like Crazy
Thanks to Kim Kardashian and co we all know what contouring is. It’s now so much part of popular parlance that we needn’t define it. But in case you’ve been living under a stone…contouring is a technique to help enhance your cheekbones and make your face look slimmer. The result of this is that your cheekbones become more prominent and well-defined. Generally speaking, it’s a four step process.
Firstly, you want to highlight your forehead, nose, chin and under the eyes with a lighter than your natural skin colour shade. Then, with a darker than natural shade, it’s time to highlight the hollows of your cheeks and temples, as well as your jawline. After that, it’s a matter of delicate blending and then setting your work with a loose powder.
Apply Bronzer To Your Cheekbones
If you value your lie-ins and don’t have the time to contour your entire face each day, then applying some bronzer to your cheekbones is an easy way to add some definition to your face. Find your cheek hollows as above, then from the corner of your mouth to the hairline just above your ear, sweep a small amount of bronzer along the top of your shadow zone – if you have trouble finding this zone, just brush under your cheekbones. Make sure you blend the bronzers so your handy work doesn’t look streaky.
Use The Right Blush & Highlighter
One of the secrets to well-defined cheekbones is knowing how to apply the right tone of blusher in strategic places. A pop of colour can lift the cheeks and add dimension to the face, but in the wrong hands, can look unnatural and OTT.
To really make your cheekbones pop, highlighter is needed. For pale skin tones, a highlighter with a white or silvery finish is best. And for dark, something with a golden hue will help accentuate your facial features.
Once you have put on your foundation and moisturiser, you can use a fan brush to dust a powder highlighter, or apply some fluid highlighter on and above your cheeks’ apples and right up to your ears, the centre of your forehead and your chin, using your fingertips, followed by a blending sponge to rub it in.
An inch below the start of your cheekbone, you can add some cream bronzer and blend it down to the apples of your cheek.
You can then use your middle finger to apply blush to these apples — and only to those areas. “We don’t really ‘blush’ naturally past the apples of the cheeks,” celebrity makeup artist Justin Tyme has explained to StyleCaster in justification.
If you currently lack a blush product, you could consider the Sheer Blush in ICONIC London’s range of highlight products — the brand’s website even allows you to sample the blush virtually.
Brow & Hair Tricks
Perfectly pruned and groomed brows can instantly transform and frame your face, pulling your very best features into focus. Indeed, the transformative power of a well-sharpened eyebrow (let alone two of them!) shouldn’t be overlooked.
If you have sparse areas or were a child of the 90’s early noughties and over plucked your brows, tweezing with impunity, and you’ve been left with nothing but thin, rainbow shaped arches, then consider using a brow serum at night. This will help condition, strengthen and, thicken your brows, which can then be plucked into an appropriate arch shape, ideal for both framing your cheekbones and looking quizzical all the time.
As Glamour point out, you can also deploy a simple hair trick to highlight your cheekbones; simply use a curling iron to create two ‘kinks’ in your hair either side of your cheekbones, mirroring their curve and drawing the eye there.
In terms of style, fringes are particularly adept at accentuating your facial features and highlighting your natural bone structure. A full fringe, in particular, can shape your face and enhance your cheekbones.
Read: 5 ways to frame your face without wearing makeup
Dermafillers
There are other, more all encompassing ways to define your cheekbones such as using dermal fillers or having cheekbone implants. Dermal fillers may be temporary or permanent and they may be comprised of natural or artificial materials, so do you due diligence prior to investing in any.
Natural materials include hyaluronic acid or collagen, but this usually dissolves over time which means that the procedure will likely need to be repeated at some stage in the future, usually about one to two years later.
The advantage, though, is that it is a natural substance that will not trigger an immune response from your body. Using artificial fillers, on the other hand, is not recommended because of the risks of having a foreign substance in the body, which then activates the immune system to mount a response. This can pose a significant health hazard to a person over time.
Give Your Cheekbones A Workout – Yes, Seriously!
As COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out and the pandemic’s threat started to recede, you might have finally signed up for a gym membership again — but not only is it perfectly possible to extend an exercise regime to the cheekbones, you wouldn’t even need a gym in order to do so.
That’s because various exercises for the cheekbones can be carried out at home. An article by LIVESTRONG.COM details step-by-step instructions for cheekbone exercises, making it easier for you to get to grips with them.
Often, the skin on the face wrinkles and sags due to the cheek muscles losing their firmness. However, you could have underestimated the extent to which exercising the face can help you in toning cheek skin that has loosened — and consequently made your cheekbones less visible — over time. Who knew?