Disclaimer:
Before I begin I want to address the elephant in the room - one that has actually made me go back and forth on posting this for some time. So let me be clear: this guide is not meant to be a statement on gender or transgender people. I support transgender rights and all forms of gender expression. I also don't want anyone using this guide to declare how someone with any specific gender identity "should" or "should not" look. In fact for a bit I was even afraid that less reputable people would try to use it to out LGBT folks (until I realized I was being stupid because they'd do that crap regardless and they'd use much dumber reasoning).

I also want to make it clear that while I use the terms male and female throughout this essay that it's solely for ease of readability and, in this context, will generally be meant to refer to cisgender persons who subsequently went through puberty without any major hormonal issues.

Now onto:

HOW EVERY DRAWING GUIDE FAILS

We've all seen them. In your how to draw anime books. In your superhero style guides. Even in your noble, distinguished, advanced guides to drawing. How to draw male and female faces. They tend to all say very similar things:

Men have wider, squarer jaws.

Women have fuller lips.

Women have petite delicate noses - in fact, better to define them as little as possible when drawing!

Speaking of delicate, women's eyebrows are thinner and more manicured.

And of course men are made entirely of hard, chiseled angles and women of smooth soft curves.

In case it wasn't clear.... all of this is bullshit.

So if all those guides are wrong, then what are the actual differences?

I'm glad you asked, hypothetical straw-man!

Let's start with the basics.

The Skull

Now, there are actually very few differences between male and female skulls. There are definitely SOME distinctions, don't get me wrong, just not as many as you might think.

If you want the whole forensic write up you can check out this link here. But, in summary:

• Male skulls have a larger brow protrusion (brow bossing).
• Female skulls have rounder, thinner boned, eye sockets.
• Men have squarer jawlines.
• Female skulls have more rounded, sloping foreheads.
• Male skulls are a bit heavier and larger.
  

This actually leads into...

So why does everyone say men have wider jaws?

Men trend towards having wider jaws, sure, but there are plenty of wide jawed ladies - nor are the differences between the jaws that pronounced or that universal. You can overlay male heads over female heads in Photoshop and see for yourself. And yet you see it coming up over and over and over again. Why?

Well, the reason men have heavier bones is to support more facial muscle. Basically, men have more muzzle meat. This originates from when we apes and used to chomp each other on the regular.

Essentially, the muscle and tissue of male faces will be thicker around the mouth area, whereas it will be slimmer with women. 

Specifically you'll see a difference in the placement of the line where the plane of the face turns into the jaw - it will be further from the edge on men. This is literally because there is more volume in the jaw area of men and not because their jaws, structurally, are wider. 'Cause by and large, they ain't.

This difference in volume will remain consistent regardless of whether the person involved has low or high cheekbones (like Mr. Cavill up there). These shapes can, and do, vary widely across ethnicities and individuals, but women, overall, will have that slimmer face meat.

So, you ask, what about people like, say...

Ryan Gosling?

To this I say, Ryan Gosling's face is a god damn optical illusion is what it is.

The thing is, Mr. Gosling still has manly face meat! His face is just more angled forward, causing his jaw to be pushed back along the Y-axis. In fact, if you look at him from a 3/4 or profile view, you can see just how much face he actually has - it just takes place across a much more severe angle.

In truth, Ryan Gosling is just a picture perfect example of how it's a myth that all men have wide jaws! He's got a narrow, pointed, forward thrusting jaw but still managed to look incredibly manly playing the lead role in the movie Drive (★ ★ ★ ★ ★ )!

To better illustrate I modeled these two women, one with very thrust forward features - a more severe angle into her mouth and chin, like the blade of an axe - and one with a flatter face with almost no forward push towards her features. Both have very similar amounts of facial volume but will give very distinct impressions when viewed from different angles.

Of course the location of fat on the face will also effect the overall look and perceptions re: gender. I find that fat deposits are one of the less consistent, and thus less useful, of the facial markers but I will include it here all the same.

Women will trend towards having more pronounced, pulled forward cheek cushions, while men's faces will trend flatter. As they age the additional volume of their face meat will give the additional appearance of jowls and drooping mouth meat, whereas the skin of elderly women will sag inwards around the mouth, like an old crinkly apple, and droop instead at the cheeks.

Next I'll talk about what is possibly the PART OF THE FACE THAT MOST DISTINGUISHES BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE

The Eyes

Now this next part is a little tricky but I've tried to make as many diagrams and explanations as I can.

Essentially, the foremost difference between male and female eyes is the angle the eyelid takes around the eyeball itself.

In short, the eyelid wraps more tightly around the male eye, and more broadly across the female eye.

Yeah, you're not going to see that in your how-to-draw manga book.

You'll see the area I've highlighted in green there. This is actually a fatty bit of tissue that is more recessed in men and more pushed forward in women - in some cases even causing the inner median of the eye to actually rise up the bridge of the nose. This means you will see MORE of the inner median when the eye is viewed from a 3/4 angle.

But... why?

Over time, women have been selected as partners based on a number of variables, some of which are, uh, frankly distressing, but in short MEN LIKED WOMEN WITH BIG OLE BABY EYES.

Yet the actual eyeballs of men and women are pretty much the same size, accounting for their head size. So what gives? Well, women basically evolved the appearance of having larger eyes, namely via that bit up there about the eyelids curving.

(Click here to see the above image embiggenated)

So what ends up happening, due to the way the angles and curves interact, is that when viewed head-on male eyes tend to look boxier, with tighter angles pulling their lower eyelids upwards and with smaller fleshy areas around the eyeball itself. Female eyes are comparatively rounder, showing more white space - even when similar amounts of iris and pupil are showing.

Also, when viewed from a 3/4 angle, the curves of male eyes will seem more dramatic and less of the inner eyelid will be visible. As far as I can tell, it also changes the angle that the opening of the eye itself sits on the face, becoming slightly more angled forward on women.

In short, if you are trying to stylize an eye, be aware that the curves of male eyes will be more pronounced, thus giving them the appearance of being sharper and more angular. Which... funnily enough, is how most people stylize them anyway.

Of course take all of this with a grain of salt... Even my own eyes are fairly "masculine" by my own metrics. There is no one size fits all here.

Brows

Brows are a little peculiar as well. Both genders generally follow the same markers as far as placement goes - the start will be up from the edge of the nose through the inner eye, the end from the nose through the outer eye, and the height of the arch will be from the nose to the pupil (thanks makeup artists).

What DOES change, however, is the angle the brow is constructed from. Think of it like points on a vector line, if you are familiar. The male brow has a longer distance of straight line before becoming a more tightly angled curve, whereas the female brow has a shorter straight distance, a broader curve, and a higher arch. This creates more space between the brows and eyes in women.

On the topic of head hair, another helpful indicator (though also a less consistent one) is the...

Hairline

You can see from my scrawled notes here that the male hairline is generally, though not always, higher and more square shaped or M shaped. The female hairline is lower and more rounded, or heart shaped.

Of course women can also have very high hairlines! But, in my experience, when they do their foreheads and hairlines both tend to be more rounded.

I also included this chart here to demonstrate some interesting hairline observations, if you so desire them:

• A - With high hairlines, women's tend to be more rounded, like a bald cap, while men's tend to be more recessed at the skull ridges.
• B - Straight hairlines are not uncommon, especially with men. When hair recesses on a straight hairline, it sometimes cuts out, like a dovetail.
• C - Women often have hair that encroaches into their face, creating a sort of soft, wavy hair line. This is often at the temples and skull ridges.
• D - Curly hair folks can sometimes end up with ringlets coming into their forehead in a jagged www pattern, like natural cornrows without the braids. Kinky haired folks often get baby hairs around their hairline which also encroach into their forehead line. Some people leave them natural, others fancy them up

Which brings me to...

Timothee Chalamet

...I don't know what's going on with Timothee Chalamet.

Moving on.

The Body

There are... actually a lot of good guides about the differences in the body. But also like, a lot of horrible ones.

For that reason I mostly wanted to focus on the face in the guide (sorry!) but I will leave off on some fun facts.

The hips of women tend to be tilted forward a bit. Not like... the sexy comic book super-heroine centaur pose everyone likes to draw them in which looks incredibly painful, but like, a touch. It changes their center of balance a little.

The legs of women are at more of an angle.

They come in more dramatically, the edge of the hip being more pushed out from the body and the muscles pointing towards the knee. This, as well as the male tendency to build more muscle mass, causes the widest point of the musculature to shift - in women you will often see the widest point of the leg just below the hip, in men just above the knee.

Women have smaller thoraxes - you know, the rib cage, shoulder blades, etc. The upper body parts. This, accompanied by, again, men's tendency toward muscle mass, gives men that that well acknowledged wider shouldered appearance.

Women have longer legs and shorter torsos. Conversely, men have longer torsos and shorter legs. Fun trivia: My brother and I have the same length legs despite him being a fair bit taller.

Both men and women are very, very hot. Facts.

As usual, feel free to send me any questions you might have!

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