Retrieving your Face from the Age Rectangle

Have you noticed how well worn clothing tends to lose shape with age? And how your face seems to do something similar?

It’s not your imagination, your face shape IS changing

It’s not just a perception – your facial structure actually changes as the natural effects of aging alters both bone and tissue. These alterations translate into recognizable landmarks signifying age. Eyes recede, the brow flattens, cheek bones lose projection, the chin protrudes and the soft tissue degrades, shrinks and sags. The face loses the triangle of youth and begins to “square out”.  For women that gives a more masculine appearance as well as an aging one.

The goals of cosmetic procedures are geared to a great extent around re-contouring and minimizing the visual effects of these shifts. With newer technology and injectables, it’s pretty amazing what you can do without even approaching a surgeon’s knife.

The visual calling card of aging – particularly in women – is associated with a rectangular shape since things are in a downward shift and projection is lost. In youth the face has a more triangular shape and this shape is associated with what people select when given options of choosing “beauty”.

 What’s happening to make the face change shape?

• The skin’s collagen gets somewhat lazy with age and is depleted faster than it can be renewed
• Jowls form and cheeks flatten out
• Muscles sag and your bones actually shrink
• Hollows form under the eye
• The brow bone flattens and the temples sink inward
• Lips shrink and the chin can protrude
• Overall volume loss changes how light reflects

You can trace your facial shape in the mirror and note how you’re experiencing the aging process yourself.

Getting back a more youthful facial contour

The goal of recontouring based on injectables is to reposition and revolumize hollow areas to restore a more triangular shape and recreate the 3D contours you had years ago. With the tools we have on hand now, that’s becoming much easier.

For instance, flattened cheeks can be slowly re-projected with Sculptra collagen stimulator or instantly accentuated with Voluma or Radiesse. Jowls can be visually realigned with Radiesse or a Hyaluronic gel. Muscle activity which pulls “down” can be altered with Botox, Xeomin or Dysport. (Stopping a downward mouth turn or lifting brow levels can make a big difference in age perception.)

Re-contouring with radio frequency firms and tightens sagging skin and is often chosen along with injectables for complimentary improvements.

The goal is – all along – to recreate that more youthful V shape. Incremental procedures can be undergone so as to slowly get this effect without any of the obvious big changes that occur with surgery.