Fuller lips are fast becoming an iconic image of our time. But how much do you know about your lips? You use them to speak and to help in eating and drinking. You use them to kiss and you use them to whistle. They are an essential feature of the human face. They frame the teeth in our happy smiles. Life would simply not be the same without them.

 

A young Russian woman by the name of Kristina Rei is the proud owner of the world’s biggest lips. These are not natural by any means. In fact, she has undergone several procedures to amplify their appearance. Her aim was to replicate the appearance of Jessica Rabbit from the late 80’s movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? She certainly has fuller lips but it is down to perception a to whether they look good or not.

 

An anthropologic study at Texas University has suggested that kissing originated in India many moons ago. Whilst there, soldiers fighting for Alexander the Great happened upon the tradition and loved it so much that they brought it back home with them.

 

A muscle named the ‘orbicularis oris’ is positioned inside the lips. This muscle is used to move your lips in any activity from talking to pouting. It was thought that the orbicularis oris consisted of just one muscle. However further research has uncovered that this is actually a set of four muscles that work together to position your lips how you desire.

 

Fact 8: Red Lips Can Line Your Pockets

A group of sociologists in Frances wanted to test how people respond to different coloured lipstick. Their plan turned out some very interesting results. Two sets of waitresses were used in a trial. One set were told to wear red lipstick and the others not to. These waitresses then worked their usual shift. The idea was then to see how many tips the waitresses received and if there was any correlation with the colour of their lips.

There is a form of facial paralysis called Bell’s palsy. This can affect the muscles in the face making it difficult to smile and to control the lips easily. The condition is most commonly a result of damage to the facial nerves but those suffering from Bell’s palsy do recover over time.

Sweat glands are responsible for keeping the skin supple and moisturised. So why is it that we have to carry around lip balm with us to keep our lips from drying out? Well, it’s due to the simple fact that our lips just don’t have any sweat glands.

The blood vessels inside our lips show up very easily through the skin. Is is due to the fact that the skin of the lips are very thin. There are only three to five layers of skin cells on the lips compared to around 16 elsewhere on the body. This allows the blood vessels underneath to glow through giving that reddish appearance of the lips.

The main factor in the shape of your lips is collagen. It is known that as we become older, our bodies produce less and less of this protein. The result is that you may no longer have those fuller lips that you used to love. Now your lips will lose some of that plumpness. This can be rectified with special dermal fillers though so you need not worry!

It is strongly believed that kissing plays a much more key role in mate selection than on first glance. Wen we kiss, two potential mates are brought closer together and this allows the transfer of each others pheromones. This biological information can help two potential mates understand the biology of one another on a more subconscious level. Women are believe to prefer to mate with a male who has an immune system that differs to their own. The passing of pheromones can be used to identify this.

Fact 1: Size Matters

It has been found in various studies that when it comes to attraction, the size of your lips really does matter. Men appear to prefer women with larger lips whereas women look for men with medium sized lips. Of course, there will be a limit to the size of lips that are preferable though!