Lip Sculpting
October 16th, 2009
I find that a significant part of doing cosmetic surgery is sculpture. Whether I am removing (liposuction), adding (breast enlargement) or rearranging (face lift), the quality of the result and achieving a natural appearance is the direct result of sculpture. Lip enlargement using injectable materials is no different. I first start out with mental image of what normal lips look like. The lips are then sculpted with the injections to look like normal lips. Just this past week, I did three lip injections to minimize wrinkles and give the face a more youthful appearance. All of my patients have a nice improvement in their appearance, no hint of the “sausage lips” look, that seems to be popular in Hollywood.
I have noticed that many injectionists must think lips look like sausages! Jimmy Dean fills cylindrical tubes with meat to create this shape. I do not find this look to be attractive. Nobody’s lips look like sausages except the ones which have been injected! Lips have a subtle curve know as a “Cupid’s Bow.” This complex curve is created by the mirror image of the upper lip meeting the lower lip. The Cupid’s Bow shape is most apparent along the upper lip where the red lip meets the flesh-colored skin also known as the vermillion border.
Lips injected with fat, collagen or hyaluronic acid will look like sausages if they are injected evenly along their length. It is a simple matter of physics. To maintain a normal appearance, they must be injected differentially, maintaining relative fullness of the central upper lip compared to the lateral upper lip. The lower lip should be the mirror image of the upper lip. The lower lip should be fuller lateral to a central relative thinness. You might think of the lips like gears which mesh. Full on top meshes with thin on the bottom and thin on top meshes with full on the bottom.
Three other things to remember. First, the lower lip is almost always fuller than the upper. Julia Robert’s lips are an exception to this rule. In other words, they are not normal. Seeking this appearance will give you unnatural looking lips. Second, lips naturally taper toward the corners of the mouth. Injections here distort this natural shape. Finally, lip enlargement can be accomplished with about 2 ml or cc. This equates to two syringes of most products. Injecting more than 2 ml, increases the risk of getting an unatural appearance (or sausage lips) and more importantly, the risk of terrible scarring from skin necrosis or skin death.
In other words, there is more to creating a naturally pouty lip than most people might appreciate.
Tara Reid: Poor Liposuction
October 14th, 2009
Photos of Tara Reid clearly reveal a poor result after liposuction or as she refers to it, “liposculpture.” According to her, she chose to have the surgery because she wanted a six pack. She was sold on the idea by her surgeon as she “shopped” around until she found someone who would do it for her.
Her appearance is consistent with removing as much fat as possible to reveal her rectus muscles. Sadly, this usually results in scarring of the under surface of the skin (dermis) to the muscle. Thus, causing the dimpled appearance of her tummy. This is extremely difficult to fix! Liposuction is not about how much you remove but how much you leave behind. I would venture to say that Tara started out with the amount of fat which should have been left after liposuction! So she was doomed to have this result. It is my guess that there will probably be a whole lot of “Photoshopping” or retouching of her photographs going on to correct her abdomen for the Playboy cover she is vying for!
I might add that she admits to having had liposuction of her abdomen because the poor result is so obvious. However, it is unusual to do this one area alone. A look at her inner and outer thighs shows asymmetry and depressions consistent with poor liposuction, as well. Sometimes it’s better to accept minor imperfections, when the likelihood of creating significant defects persists by doing ill-advised cosmetic procedures.
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