Good vs Bad Forward Growth: The Best Profile Isn't the Most Forward

Forward growth is how far forward your upper and lower jaws grew while your face was developing. Most people land in the ordinary middle, and one honest side photo is enough to see where yours sits.

Here's what the split-screen videos leave out. When researchers showed people profiles that differed only in where the lower jaw sat, the most attractive one wasn't the most forward. It was the average one, and ratings fell in both directions (Johnston et al., 2005). Forward growth is a sweet spot, not a ladder.

If a "forward grown vs recessed" split-screen sent you to the bathroom mirror, start here: what good and bad look like, a check you can trust more than a mirror, and how much it matters.

What is forward growth, in plain terms?

Forward growth is the front-to-back position your maxilla (upper jaw) and mandible (lower jaw) reached relative to your skull while you grew. Jaws that came well forward give a "supported" face; jaws that grew more down and back give what forums call a "recessed" one.

The phrase comes from orthotropics, John Mew's facial-growth theory, which mainstream orthodontics rejects. The anatomy is mainstream, though, and measured on an X-ray (Steiner analysis):

• SNA, about 82°: how far forward the upper jaw sits.
• SNB, about 80°: the same for the lower jaw.
• ANB, about 2°: the gap between them. At 4° or more the lower jaw sits back (Class II, the "recessed" pattern); at 0° or below it sits ahead (Class III).

It feels like a master switch because one bone does several jobs. The maxilla props up your cheekbones and under-eyes; the mandible carries your chin and jawline.

What does good vs bad forward growth look like?

"Good" forward growth means a supported under-eye, lips just behind a nose-to-chin line, and a chin roughly under the lower lip. "Bad" usually means recessed, but too far forward is a second way to miss.

The evidence for the middle column is direct. In the Johnston study, 102 people rated profile silhouettes in which only the lower jaw moved. The average jaw scored highest, and scores dropped the further it moved either way.

So keep this model: a sweet spot, not a ladder. Forums treat forward growth as something you climb forever. The data say it's a band, and the middle already wins.

The forums get one thing half right. At 5° either side of average, the forward jaw was rated significantly more attractive than the recessed one; at the other distances the gap wasn't significant.

Can you have too much forward growth?

Yes. Past the middle, projection stops reading as structure and starts reading as protrusion, and clinicians treat it just as they treat recession.

• Bimaxillary protrusion. Both jaws or both sets of front teeth sit forward, so the lips push out and often strain to close. Treatment aims to pull the front teeth back and reduce how far the profile sticks out (Ogundipe & Otuyemi, 2017).
• Class III. The lower jaw sits ahead of the upper (a large mandible, a small maxilla, or both), so the chin leads and the midface can look flat. Mild versions often read as a strong jaw; see underbite and side profile.

In the Johnston study, 78% of participants said they'd want treatment if the most forward jaw were theirs, against 74% for the most recessed one. "Extreme forward growth" isn't the jackpot. The ideal is ordinary.

How do you know if you have good forward growth?

Take one true side photo and read two checkpoints: your lips against a nose-to-chin line, and your cheek against your eyeball. If both look ordinary, your forward growth is ordinary, like most people's.

1. Shoot it properly. Camera at eye height and arm's length, head level, teeth lightly together, lips relaxed, no chin tuck. A phone held low invents recession.
2. Lips vs the E-line. Lay a straight edge from your nose tip to your chin tip. Ricketts' adult norm puts the lower lip about 2 mm behind it, give or take 2 (cephalometric norms). Lips well ahead with the chin far behind is the recessed pattern; both lips well ahead with a normal chin leans protrusive.
3. Cheek vs eyeball. Drop a vertical line from the front of your eye. Cheek and under-eye rim at or ahead of it is a "positive vector" (supported); behind it is negative. Your eye can judge this one: in 40 children, a visual vector call lined up with X-ray-measured cheekbone support (Frey, 2013).

It's a screen, not a diagnosis: camera angle fakes millimetres, which is why orthodontists use an X-ray. If it's the chin that bothers you, receding chin in men goes deeper.

Notice what this check measures: bone, frozen, from the angle strangers see least. If what you really want to know is how your face lands at first glance, our first-impression test reads that from an ordinary face photo in about a minute. It can't see your jaw angles; it shows what your whole face is doing.

Is forward growth genetic?

Mostly, yes. Twin studies put a large share of jaw position down to genes; the rest comes from how your face developed in childhood, none of it from anything you did as an adult.

• Genes. In untreated twins, genes explained about 61% of the variation in front-to-back measurements and 72% in vertical ones (Carels et al., 2001). Vertical traits look the most inherited of all (Manfredi et al., 1997).
• Childhood breathing. When researchers plugged monkeys' noses, every animal gradually developed a different face and bite from the controls (Harvold et al., 1981). That's why chronic mouth-breathing in children gets taken seriously.
• How common it is. About three in four people worldwide have a Class I bite and one in five a Class II, the pattern that often comes with a set-back lower jaw (Alhammadi et al., 2018). If yours leans recessed, you're in very large company.

What the evidence doesn't support is the 1 a.m. version: that you'd have a different face if you'd kept your mouth shut at nine. The human data on that are mostly observational.

Forward growth vs downward growth: what's the difference?

Every face grows both down and forward; the two terms describe the ratio, meaning which way your chin travels as your lower face lengthens.

When vertical growth wins, the lower jaw rotates backward, the chin drops down and back, and the lower third lengthens. When forward growth wins, the jaw rotates forward and the chin meets the profile line. Arne Björk's implant studies showed this direction varies from person to person (Björk, 1963; 1969). A long lower face with lips resting apart is the classic downward-grower look, overlapping with facial thirds.

Does forward growth actually matter for attractiveness?

Some, but less than forums claim. Raters notice profile differences when nothing else varies, but nobody meets you as an isolated silhouette.

People form trait judgments from a face within 100 milliseconds (Willis & Todorov, 2006). They also judge attractiveness as a whole: the same upper face looks better above a better lower half, and the effect vanishes when the halves are misaligned (Abbas & Duchaine, 2008). Your projection is one note in a chord.

Our view: the strict side profile is the angle strangers study least. If the question under "do I have forward growth" is really "is my face working against me?", test that directly: it takes about a minute, the analysis runs before you pay, and the full report is $5, one-time.

Where it does matter is breathing. A set-back lower jaw (retrognathia) is a recognised risk factor for obstructive sleep apnoea (Hynes & Mansfield, 2024). Heavy snoring plus unrefreshing sleep deserves a doctor, not a profile ranking.

Can you change your forward growth as an adult?

Not the bone, short of surgery. In 301 patients followed past puberty, facial growth became clinically insignificant after about age 20 (Fudalej et al., 2007). In a small 20-year follow-up of adults, the lower jaw drifted backward, not forward (Forsberg et al., 1991). And the American Association of Orthodontists says no research shows mewing helps the jawline (AAO).

Jaw surgery is the one thing that moves adult jaws; see forward growth surgery. What still changes how forward your face reads, and what helps if you're still growing, is in how to get forward growth at your age.

The bottom line

Forward growth is real anatomy: mostly inherited, set by your early twenties, and a sweet spot rather than a ladder. The balanced middle beats both extremes, and most people are in it or near it.

Check your profile once with the two checkpoints above, then stop scoring it. No stranger measures your SNB; they take in a whole, moving face in a fraction of a second. To see what that read says, take the test.

Studies referenced

• Abbas & Duchaine (2008). Perception, 37(8), 1187–1196.
• Alhammadi et al. (2018). Dental Press Journal of Orthodontics, 23(6), 40.e1–40.e10.
• Björk (1963). Journal of Dental Research, 42(1), 400–411.
• Björk (1969). American Journal of Orthodontics, 55(6), 585–599.
• Carels et al. (2001). Clinical Orthodontics and Research, 4(3), 130–140.
• Forsberg, Eliasson & Westergren (1991). European Journal of Orthodontics, 13(4), 249–254.
• Frey (2013). Angle Orthodontist, 83(5), 790–794.
• Fudalej, Kokich & Leroux (2007). American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, 131(4 Suppl), S59–S67.
• Harvold et al. (1981). American Journal of Orthodontics, 79(4), 359–372.
• Hynes & Mansfield (2024). Australian Prescriber, 47(2), 52–56.
• Johnston et al. (2005). European Journal of Orthodontics, 27(2), 129–133.
• Manfredi et al. (1997). American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, 111(1), 44–51.
• Ogundipe & Otuyemi (2017). Journal of the West African College of Surgeons, 7(2), 31–46.
• Willis & Todorov (2006). Psychological Science, 17(7), 592–598.