Facial structure
Ogee Curve
The S-shaped line from the cheekbone out, then into the cheek hollow, seen in three-quarter view. A lighting and leanness effect as much as a bone one.
What Ogee Curve means
The ogee curve is a term borrowed from architecture: an S-shaped line that goes convex over the cheekbone, then concave into the cheek hollow below it. On a face you only really see it from a three-quarter angle. It is the transition between the highlight on the zygomatic bone and the shadow under it. A clean ogee reads as a smooth double curve; a flat or padded midface barely shows one at all. It is more a description of a light-and-shadow pattern than a single anatomical part.
What it actually does to the first impression
In a three-quarter photo a strong ogee is a big part of what makes a face look sculpted, because the eye follows that S-line as a continuous contour. Photographers and editors know this; it is why side-lighting from above is flattering and flat front-on flash is not. The same face can show a crisp ogee in one shot and none in the next purely from where the light sits. Straight-on and in motion, almost no one perceives an ogee as such. It is a photographic feature first, a lived-face feature a distant second.
Reality check: the forums vs the data
Because the ogee is mostly light plus a little fat, it is one of the most exaggerated things in face-rating threads. People credit bone for what a window's worth of overhead light and a slightly leaner cheek produced. You can fake a dramatic ogee with makeup contour or a ring light angled high, and you can lose it entirely under flat fluorescent. Chasing surgery for a better ogee usually means cheekbone augmentation or buccal fat removal, both of which carry real downsides, when relighting and a lean midface would have done most of the work for free.
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Related terms
Reference data on this site