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Scroll through TikTok or YouTube long enough, and the phrase hunter eyes tends to turn up, and Chris Hemsworth is one of the names people hold up as having them. It began on online appearance forums in the 2010s, and by 2023 videos tagged with it on TikTok had drawn 49.6 million views, according to Vice. For some people, wanting that look has moved well past tweaking an eyebrow shape and into a surgeon’s office, where the price runs into five figures.
Dr. Deepak Ramesh, a plastic surgeon based in New Jersey, offers a dedicated hunter eyes package that costs $30,000 to $40,000. He believes he is one of only three or four surgeons in America doing it, and he told GQ his exact mix of techniques is proprietary. He has lately been performing 40 to 50 of these procedures a year, up from about five in 2019 and 2020.
Not everyone in the field is cheering. Dr. Steven Williams, a California plastic surgeon and past president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, worries that patients who have this surgery may develop real vision problems by the time they are 30 or 40. Depending on the techniques used, he said, it may also be hard to reverse. He added that surgeons tend to hope trends like this fade before many patients ask.
What Hunter Eyes Actually Are
‘Hunter eyes’ is an internet term, not a medical one, and Face Analysis Lab notes it has no agreed definition. The lab describes the look as eyes set deep under a low, fairly straight brow, with outer corners higher than the inner ones and a narrow, almond-shaped opening that shows little or no upper eyelid. Vice names actors like Chris Hemsworth and Robert Pattinson as examples.
By 2018, an online meme was setting hunter eyes against so-called prey eyes, which are round and wide with more lid showing and a higher brow. Hunter eyes tend to get compared to a jaguar’s, prey eyes to an owl’s. It is only a metaphor, though. Every human has forward-facing eyes, and the look comes from the brow, the lids, and the bone around the eye.
One reason the look reads as intense is the expression it resembles. People lower their brows when concentrating or angry, and in several studies observers rated lowered brows as more dominant, though that was weaker or absent in some cultures. The lab also cites an experiment on male faces, where more masculine shapes looked more dominant but were likelier to be judged cold or dishonest. Intense does not automatically mean attractive.
What the Surgery Involves
Ramesh’s approach combines three techniques. Globe recession, borrowed from the treatment of thyroid eye disease, pushes the eyeball deeper into the socket. An implant or filler builds up the cheek, and canthoplasty reshapes the eyelid. Dr. Barry Eppley, an Indiana cosmetic surgeon, told Vice in 2023 that, depending on the patient, getting the look could take several procedures, including a brow implant and tear trough filler, at $2,486 to $7,460 each.
Ramesh said 70% of his patients are men, usually in their 20s and 30s. They often find him through looksmaxxing, an online subculture where extreme appearance changes are the norm, and many fly in from South Asia and Africa. He described many as fixated on numbers, down to the millimeter, and said some try to bargain for more. He tells them he will do what is safe and looks good, but no more.
Williams added that lowering the brow and hiding the eyelid crease may make patients look older, and he recalled two college-aged men who had the surgery and then wanted it reversed. Ramesh said he has never been asked to undo it. About a quarter of his patients ask for a smaller cheek implant, and he said the silicone type he uses can be shaved down safely.
What You Can and Can’t Change
Some of the look is easier to change than you might expect. According to Face Analysis Lab, light from above deepens the shadow under the brow, while flat light from the front removes it, so the same face can look hunter-eyed in one photo and not the next. A slight narrowing of the lower lids also makes eyes look more focused, and Eppley said patients often bring in photos of models squinting.
Without surgery, the lab says, the bone of the brow ridge, the spot where the eye corners attach, and how deep the eye sits in its socket all stay as they are. It adds that there is no evidence that eye exercises or taping change any of them. Dr. Ross Perry, a cosmetic doctor, has said mewing, pressing the tongue to the roof of the mouth, is unlikely to change eye or face shape either.
Williams said surgeons need to respect a patient’s autonomy while being clear about what surgery can do, and that those conversations matter a bit more with younger patients, especially with the rise of social media. For a look that can shift with a lamp or a camera angle, that is a conversation worth having well before surgery is on the table.