Pucker Up! Get the Full Lips You Desire

December 30, 2014
By Susan Kamyab
ThePlasticSurgeryChannel.com

Have your lips become thinner, drier, and creased with age? Full lips are a sign of youth, but what happens to our lips when we begin to mature?

Achieving fuller, luscious lips is entirely possible. The difficult part is making sure your plastic surgeon is skilled enough to rejuvenate your lips with finesse.

Quack, Quack! Avoiding Duck Lips

A concern among women who augment their lips is that they’ll be overfilled. There are two parts of the lips that can be injected: the white roll, where the pink of the lip meets the skin under the nose, and the red line, the junction where the dry and wet parts of your lips meet.  Where your doctor injects you determines your result. If too much is injected in the white roll, your lips will look like a shelf.  Your doctor should also avoid overcorrecting the philtrum (the two lines that come down from your nose to your lip), which can make your lips look duck-like. If your lips are too full, they can be injected with hyaluronidase, which breaks up hyaluronic acid, reversing the plumping process.

The Right Proportion

Dr. Clifford P. Clark, a board certified plastic surgeon from Florida, explains, “If your practitioner doesn’t have a good sense of proportion and facial aesthetics, you can very easily become filler face with the lips.” The upper lip should be 1/3—the lower lip should be 2/3, and if that proportion is off you can see it very quickly. “Our mind is such a complex computer and it’s very sensitive to things being out of proportion,” says Dr. Clark.

Wanting Lips Like the Celebs

Recent research suggests that full lips may have as much to do with a woman’s perceived age as the appearance of wrinkles. The volume in your lips starts to decline as early as in the mid-30s. But how can you create a natural-looking, full lip without overdoing it?

People need to be realistic about the outcome; if you have small lips you don’t want to over fill with the injection. Your lips need to match your face so that they may appear natural. Examining the normal anatomy of what lips look like is essential. Wanting lips like Angelina Jolie is understandable, but is it logical? It is imperative that you speak with a board certified plastic surgeon who will know exactly how much of what procedure will rejuvenate your unique lips.

The Safe Route

Dr. Clark clarifies, “With every good thing we tend to dive in with both feet. It’s been one of the true great advancements in cosmetic enhancement; adding volume to the face has really allowed us to get a more natural result. However, people have taken it to extremes. We need to be very careful, but more important than that, we need to be safe.”