Many have written about the Marquardt Beauty Mask, applied it and tried to evaluate its validity. Unfortunately, we find that many who do so do not really understand the mask or how to use it. As one example, a lot of good effort went into creating an online version of the mask at the Interactive Mathematics page on “The Math Behind the Beauty.” It allows you to select a mask and then overlay it to photos of a number of famous people or upload your own photo.
We uploaded the Marquardt Beauty Mask to the Interactive Mathematics site and this is what we found. When the Marquardt mask (black lines) is aligned vertically to match the pupils of the eyes, the Interactive Math mask (magenta lines) is too long. When the Marquardt mask is aligned horizontally to match the line of the pupils and the center line of the mouth, the Interactive Math mask is too narrow. As a result, none of the photos evaluated on the Interactive Math site will provide an accurate analysis of beauty as defined by the Marquardt mask.
Click on the images for higher resolution version.
In another instance, a young adult male created a YouTube video showing the transformation of his face to conform to that of the Marquardt Beauty Mask. The morph animation was executed very nicely, but he morphed his face to conform to the female mask rather than the male mask. This produced a rather unnatural appearance.
We sincerely appreciate attention that the Marquardt Beauty Mask has received in both popular and academic settings, but caution you to not believe everything that others have to say about it or to go by the examples they provide. Instructions on the proper use of the Beauty Mask are found Repose Frontal Mask Application page.