Hollow (Celebrity) Cheeks

have become a hot topic for discussion. There is hardly a week where we cannot see pictures of a famous actress or singer who is not noticeably enlarged in the cheek region. Why is that?

There are several reasons why cheeks are a favorite area where to inject volume. As we age, even from as early as our mid twenties the cheeks can lose volume. This can change our facial proportions and make us look older. Facial proportions change from the juvenile heart shaped face with the wider cheek region to the jowly aged look, haggard around the cheeks and square in the chin and jaw line.

There are several causes why people would look strangely enlarged and, or droopy in the cheek region. It would often be caused by a combination of too much Botulinum Toxin and dermal fillers.

Injected in large amounts around the crow’s feet area Botulinum Toxin helps to reduce the appearance of lines around the eyes, at a price though. The muscles that cause the smile lines are also part of the few muscles lifting the cheeks. Injecting Botulinum Toxin here is a mistake as it makes the cheeks droop. This is however still standard practice in most cosmetic practices because it makes the crow’s feet disappear due to the lack of movement around the eyes. The smile also becomes fake and expressionless as part of the famous frozen look.

Admittedly it is possible to give the jaw line and sagging cheeks a lift by injecting large amounts of dermal fillers around the upper cheek region. This helps to pull up the cheeks and lower face. However, you can imagine that it requires a lot of filler material and does rarely give a natural look.
 
In London this is called the Y lift, popular with French doctors. Very artificial and dubbed the pillow face in the press because the cheeks look so overly stuffed.

In Beverly Hills on the other hand a lot of  the cheek enlargement is still done with fat transplant, this explains the initially huge cheeks and puffy faces which slowly return to almost normal after a couple of months. You might remember the pictures of Cameron Diaz in Grazia a couple of months ago…
 

How to spot a bad cheek job?
 
The highest point of the cheeks should be near the cheek bone, lateral, in a feline kind of way. In most over-injected patients the highest point of the cheeks slips and is more on level with the tip of the nose or even below in a side profile shoot. Watch out for that, you will be surprised how many of those you can spot in any of the glossies.