Your cheekbones are the bones that form the shape of your cheeks, creating those bumps you can feel just below and to the side of your eyes. If you gently press your fingers on your face below your eyes and open and close your mouth, you may feel these strong bones shifting slightly under your skin.

Cheekbones help protect your eyes and give your face its particular shape. Some people have high, prominent cheekbones that stick out noticeably, while others have flatter, less visible ones. You can see the outline of someone's cheekbones more clearly when they smile or when light hits their face from the side.

The scientific name for the cheekbone is the zygomatic bone. These bones connect to several other bones in your skull and help form the sockets that hold your eyes. Artists pay careful attention to cheekbones when drawing or sculpting faces, since they're one of the key features that make each person's face unique. Different people and different populations around the world tend to have distinctively shaped cheekbones, contributing to the wonderful variety of human faces.