According to this source, “In normal human fetal development, the right and left sides of the lower half of the jaw fuse together before birth. When the fusion of the two sides doesn’t take place properly, the baby is born with a cleft chin.” I’ve read other sources that say similar things.
Are cleft chins considered a deformity in medicine/biology? It seems a bit weird to me to call this a deformity.
First of all, it’ll be helpful to talk about this with a much better cite than some random website. Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, an authoritative and thoroughly-cited encyclopedia of heritable disease, does have an entry for “cleft chin”. However, there’s not much to say about it, just a handful of observational studies. OMIM doesn’t have anything about the developmental mechanism, like they do for more serious and well-studied developmental abnormalities.
Personally I’d use a word more like “abnormality”, but the difference between that and “deformity” is mostly semantic. OMIM used the word “peculiarity”, for what it’s worth.
The wiki for Cleft Chin doesn’t call it anything like a deformity. It may result from incomplete fusion of bones or develop later. Some people may have minimal fusion of the bones early in life that could be considered some kind of special physiological condition but I’ve seen clefts and dimples in chins a lot, particularly in men with broad jaws. I’ve seen it also in people who have taken steroids, HGH, and other drugs that promote growth and it may be just the result of the chin bones growth pattern.
I hope not, because my whole family has this…peculiarity…I have a rather prominent one. I find it quite attractive, if I say so myself!
No.
Yes, perhaps I should’ve looked at more websites.
I seem to remember that Kirk Douglas was considered attractive.
Not to mention Laurence Olivier.
John Travolta
I have a cleft chin, as well. According to my mother, that’s where the angels kissed me when I was born.
You gonna call my mother a liar?
I’ve always just heard it was a sexually selected trait like say blue eyes, sure it’s a mutation but like 10,000 years ago someone thought it was hot and pretty soon a lot of babies had them.
What does sexually selected mean?
“Cleft in chin, devil within” (I assume this means the rakish kind of devil)
Ok, I’ll ask… How do guys shave in that dimple? Doesn’t a razor slide right over it? Missing a spot?
I know Kirk Douglas, somehow kept it shaved.
Kirk was a bit unusual. His cleft is a deep dimple.
Cary Grant had a crease.
One of my sons has a cleft. He calls it his “butt chin”.
Girls can have them, too — my 7-year-old son’s girl classmate inherited one from her mother.
Not really a problem. Maybe I do one or two more of the usual facial contortions you do while shaving than someone with an even chin.
That’s what I call mine too :D.
TPM muses on his brother’s cleft chin here: How does Kirk Douglas shave his chin dimple? - The Straight Dope
Basically, it’s considered attractive by the opposite sex. That results in people with this trait being more often selected for sexual activity, thus resulting in more descendants, some of whom will also carry on the genetic info for this trait.
