In the previous post,
we talked about how a facelift is often misunderstood as a procedure that pulls the face upward.
However, I emphasized that the face should not be pulled.
I’m not even sure if anyone is really curious about this. (Hopefully at least one person is.)
But I believe a blog is a place where I can share what I want to say.
So if you happen to be reading this,
I’d appreciate it if you could follow along with a bit of patience.
First,
let’s talk about the characteristics of the face.
As I showed in the previous post,
the “sagging” that most of you dislike is usually located on the front part of the face.
Because of this,
people naturally start to think,
“If we just pull the sagging areas,
wouldn’t that solve the problem?”
And that way of thinking is what has shaped facelift procedures up to now.
The picture below shows a product based on this idea.
PICTURE
It is, quite literally, a tape that “pulls” the face.
The folded areas created by the pulling
are then hidden with the hair,
so it actually looks more convincing than you might expect (haha).
So then,
you might be wondering,
“If pulling it like this works,
why are you saying we shouldn’t pull the face?”
And that’s a very reasonable question.
The answer lies in two key points I mentioned earlier.
1. The area that needs to be corrected is the front of the face.
2. However, the actual surgical approach is made from the side of the face.
Let’s take another look.
The area marked in red is the starting point of a facelift surgery in other words, the incision line.
In a facelift, the target is the front of the face (where the sagging occurs),
but the surgery actually begins much farther back, in front of the ear.
And this is where the problem arises.
Let me ask you a question.
“Is it possible for the area being operated on to be different from the area that is meant to be improved?”
What if you tried to create double eyelids by starting with the nose?
Or, if you’re doing a nose surgery,
Could you make an incision on the eyelids and still perform the nose procedure?
Think about the areas we actually want to improve nasolabial folds, smile lines, and the incision line in front of the ear.
These areas are even farther apart than the distance between the eyes and the nose.
(Try measuring it roughly with your hand. The distance from the smile lines to the ear is even greater than that between the eyes and nose.)
Now, if you were to cut the nose in order to make double eyelids…
Sure, maybe it could be done in theory,
but it would probably be extremely uncomfortable, take a long time,
and the results would likely come out uneven and strange.
And yet,
if we want the front of the face to look beautiful,
why do surgeons operate from the side of the face?
If we could directly remove and adjust the deep nasolabial folds on the front of the face,
would that really be impossible?
No, you *can* remove it directly.
In fact, removing it directly is even more effective.
Shockingly,
direct removal is overwhelmingly more effective.
In fact, in the past,
there were even surgeries that involved directly cutting out nasolabial folds.
Nasolabial folds are deep, and the skin above them sags and remains thick.
This part can be removed directly and simply. As you can see, the effect is very straightforward and clean. I can assure you, for experienced Korean specialists, the procedure including neat closure would take just a little over 30 minutes.
In fact, this is the standard approach.
The basic principle of surgery is simple: perform the procedure directly on the area where you want to see results.
But isn’t it strange?
I’ve used nasolabial folds as an example, but the same applies to smile lines, neck wrinkles, or forehead wrinkles.
Why do surgeons often start in areas far away from the places where we actually want to see results?
Facelift surgery is said to be the mark of an expert if all steps can be completed in around four hours. (I’ll come back to this point later.)
So, can you guess why a simple procedure, one that could be done in 30 minutes on the area you care about is instead started somewhere completely unrelated and takes four hours to complete?
I’ll explain why in the next post.