Before you ask, it is pronounced like buckle. Buccal
fat became the talk of some corners of the internet last week after social
media users started speculating about celebrities who might have removed some
for an extra-chiseled look.
Buccal fat is a type of fat found in the midsection of the
face that can, in some people, make a face appear more rounded. Surgically
remove some of that fat, and the face will immediately look more sculpted.
Well, almost immediately. Initially, most patients experience some swelling,
but once that goes down, it is hello, cheekbones!
OK, one more time, what exactly is buccal fat?
“There are facial compartments that define the shape of the
face, and there are superficial ones and deep ones,” said Dr Andrew Jacono, a
New York City plastic surgeon best known for giving Marc Jacobs a face-lift.
“Buccal fat is one of the deep facial fat compartments that kind of give
structure to the cheek area.” It’s not affected by weight fluctuation, Jacono
said, “we’re born with how much we have.”
“There are some people who have a face that’s very sculpted,
whether they’re cheekbones or more highlighted. There’s some people who have a
more cherubic face. Some people call it chipmunk cheeks,” he added. He pointed
to the faces of two cherubs, the round-faced angels on the bottom of the
“Sistine Madonna” by Italian painter Raphael, as examples of prime candidates
for buccal fat removal.
Why are we talking about this now?
Blame Twitter and TikTok — and, inadvertently, Lea Michele.
The “Funny Girl” star posted a glammed-up selfie on Instagram last week, which
made its way over to Twitter, where users speculated that Michele had the
procedure done.
“Wake up babe new surgery just dropped in Hollywood jaw
filler and buccal fat removal,” tweeted Agnes Philip, a 21-year-old computer
science student in Florida who included images of Michele and other celebrities
who Philip believed had buccal fat surgery.
And people are really removing this stuff?
Yes, plenty of them. “I’m doing three times as many
buccal-fat reductions this year than I was five years ago,” said Jacono, who
charges $40,000 for the procedure. (Other plastic surgeons say the procedure
typically will cost between $7,000 and $16,000.)
Chrissy Teigen confirmed in an Instagram story in September
that she had buccal fat removed. “Since I quit drinking I’m really seeing the
results and I like it,” Teigen said, tagging her Beverly Hills plastic surgeon,
Dr Jason Diamond.
“I think of it as one of the classic celebrity secret
plastic surgeries,” said Dr Lara Devgan, a plastic surgeon in the New York City
borough of Manhattan. “These are all tiny tweak surgeries that alter facial
features by 1 to 2 millimeters each that are omnipresent among public-facing
people.”
What about those of us who are not public-facing people?
A quick search for buccal-fat removal on TikTok will turn up
no shortage of people who are documenting their buccal-fat-removal experience
and their results in the following weeks, months and even years.
Tina Lee, a nurse who lives in Los Angeles, traveled to
Tijuana, Mexico, in 2020 to have the procedure done. It cost $600. Her mom went
with her and had the surgery, too. “It wasn’t painful, and the recovery was
super fast for me,” said Lee, 30. “They gave me pain medication, but I didn’t
even need it.” She documented the trip on TikTok, where it has been viewed
4.8 million times.
So what is the procedure like?
Quick, actually. “This operation takes less than a
half-hour,” said Dr Alan Matarasso, vice president of development for the
American Society of Plastic Surgeons. “I can do it on a 20-year-old person at 8
in the morning, and they can be sitting at their desk at 9:15 with basically no
discomfort and feeling like it was less involved than going to the dentist.”
Buccal fat can be removed using a local anesthetic. A
plastic surgeon will use a scalpel to make a small incision inside a patient’s
mouth to remove a fat pad the “size of a medium grape,” Matarasso said. The
incision is then closed with dissolvable stitches. For typical patients,
post-surgery pain and swelling is gone within a week. (If you would really like
to get into the gory details, you can watch Matarasso complete the procedure in
a YouTube video.)
Lee said it took several months before her face felt fully
back to normal, but she noted she had additional procedures done during her
trip to Mexico, including chin and jawline liposuction.
What would I look like if I got it done?
For a rough idea, gently suck in through a straw and look in
a mirror. Devgan recommends doing your best “Zoolander” impression.
What are the risks?
Bleeding is “the biggest problem,” Matarasso said, noting
his patients follow a specific protocol before surgery — which includes not
taking aspirin — to minimize this risk. He also noted the potential for nerve
injury. Further risks, according to the Cleveland Clinic, include incision
infection, facial numbness and an asymmetrical face after the procedure is
complete.
Does this surgery age well?
“Back in the olden days, doctors would remove the entire
buccal-fat pad, all of it. And then what would happen as you got older was you
would look a little sunken in, like you’re sucking your cheeks in too much,”
Jacono said. “We don’t remove the whole thing, we just contour the excess
amount out.”اضافة اعلان
Still, multiple plastic surgeons warned the procedure was
not for everyone. If you already have only a small amount of buccal fat to
begin with, removing it can make your face look sunken and age you prematurely.
“For the right patient, buccal-fat pad excision can be quite beautiful, but if
somebody is extremely thin or gaunt, you don’t want to overly hollow the face,”
Devgan said. “In addition, if somebody has a moderate to severe degree of skin
laxity, removing the buccal-fat pad can make that worse.”
Is this ever medically necessary?
Nope, purely cosmetic — although having an excess of buccal
fat can be uncomfortable for some people, particularly while eating, Jacono
said.
Can it be reversed?
Technically, yes, but it will require multiple additional
procedures, Jacono said. “Like all plastic surgery, doing it right the first
time is important,” he said. “Undoing it afterward becomes a much bigger
multistage surgery.”
Anything else I should know?
In addition to social media users speculating about
celebrities who might have removed buccal fat from their faces, other users
used the surgery’s sudden popularity to weigh in on the state of the beauty
industry at large.
“What is buccal fat how are they still inventing new flaws
for us,” Jules Zucker, a music supervisor who lives in Brooklyn, tweeted, using
an expletive. Zucker’s tweet has been liked more than 100,000 times. “I am
literally running out of limbs and features,” she added in a reply tweet.
“Life is too short to hate yourself. If something has been
bothering you for years, and you have the resources to make yourself feel
better about it, then, like, go for it,” Zucker, 27, said in a phone interview.
“It’s the rapid-fire trends that give me pause because, it’s like, they’re
trends. Trends may be different in a year, but the only way you can reverse the
procedure you did to your face is with another procedure.”
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