How Facial Plastic Surgery is Involved in Transgender Transformations
Lately, people who identify as transgender have been getting a lot of attention on all kinds of social media platforms. This is largely thanks to Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, the Olympic champion who announced earlier this year that she would be undergoing gender reassignment surgery to transform from male to female. Her surgery was completed this past spring and her new look was revealed on the cover of Vanity Fair in July.
Some of the latest reports on Caitlyn’s gender reassignment surgery discuss how her plastic surgeons spent about ten hours making alterations to her face to make her look more feminine. Facial plastic surgery actually plays a large part in gender reassignment; it’s not all about changing a person’s genitalia. Men and women have distinctly different facial features and those have to be addressed when a person is transitioning from one gender to another. In Caitlyn’s case, she had a brow lift, cheek implants, rhinoplasty, and Botox, among other procedures.
These are procedures you can find in just about any facial plastic surgeon’s practice. For regular, non-transgender patients, the procedures are designed to rejuvenate their face to give a fresher, younger appearance. Transgender patients can benefit from facial rejuvenation as well, but the goal for their surgery will also be to reshape some of their facial features so they best match the gender with which they choose to identify.
For example, rhinoplasty is a procedure that reshapes the nose. Women typically have smaller, narrower noses with a lower nasal bridge and a less prominent nasal tip. Men’s noses, on the other hand, are slightly more prominent with a slightly higher nasal bridge and a well-defined nasal tip. To change a male patient’s nose into a more feminine nose, a rhinoplasty surgeon would need to lower the nasal bridge, narrow the nasal base, and make the nasal tip smaller with a more refined shape. The opposite would be true for changing a female patient’s nose into a more masculine nose.
As another example, cheek and chin augmentations are procedures that help give those parts of the face a little more volume and definition when aging causes them to blend in with the other facial features. Male and female patients don’t get the same kind of augmentations, though; as with noses, these characteristics vary between genders. Men typically have a sharper, more angular look to their face with their cheek bones and jaw line. Women tend to have softer, more rounded edges to their face from those same areas. The size, shape, and position of the implants will determine whether a patient looks more masculine or feminine following the procedure.
It can take quite a lot of time and effort to surgically alter how a patient looks. This is especially true for transgender patients. Your DNA determines how you look when you’re born and how you look as you grow up, so changing the appearance you’ve had your entire life requires a great deal of work. As with non-transgender patients, each transgender patient is unique with their own distinctive features. Some patients will need more surgery than others to match the gender with which they identify. The important thing to find a surgeon who is capable of meeting your needs with the highest quality care.
Whether you are a transgender or non-transgender patient, you can trust your facial plastic surgery to Dr. Paul Nassif. Dr. Nassif has been working as a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, CA for over twenty years and has performed thousands of facial plastic surgery procedures on patients all over the world. Dr. Nassif makes a point of taking the time to really learn what his patients want and does his best to provide the most natural and aesthetically pleasing results while keeping his patients healthy and happy.
If you would like to schedule a patient consultation for any facial plastic surgery procedure offered by Dr. Nassif, call his office at (310) 275-2467. You can also send your name, contact information, and a general description of the type of work you are looking to have done using our Contact page here on Dr. Nassif’s website.