Feminine face a key to sexual transition
Steve Dorfman
July has been quite the busy month for Caitlyn Jenner:
■ Arthur Ashe Courage Award at last week’s ESPYs.
■ Debut of her docu-series, “I Am Cait,” on Sunday night (E! network, 8 p.m.).
She’s had — and will continue having — millions watching her very public transition into being the world’s most wellknown transgender woman.
However, one local doctor — Jupiter facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Vartan Mardirossian — has been following Jenner’s journey for a difffffffffffferent reason than most.
He’s interested in the aesthetics of Jenner’s transformation — specififically, her face.
As one of the country’s leading practitioners in the ultra-specialized fifield of facial feminization surgery (FFS), Mardirossian has treated transitioning transgender patients from all over the world.
Defifined within the medical community as “a combination of surgical and nonsurgical procedures that aim at increasing the femininity and the attractiveness of the face,” FFS, says Mardirossian, “is now often being referred to as ‘gender reaffiffirmation surgery.’”
Regardless of which name it goes by, the goal of FFS is to reshape and recontour a transitioning male face into a convincing, natural-looking, female one.
No simple task — especially when you consider how our brains are wired.
“There have been studies which show that we determine a person’s sex within a millisecond of seeing that person’s face,” explains Mardirossian.
The fifirst facial area to which our eyes go: the forehead.
After that, says Mardirossian, it’s the mandible ( jaw), cheeks, hairline and skin texture. And that’s just the start. Achieving a truly feminized appearance often requires “a constellation of procedures” says Mardirossian.
These can include some, or all, of the following: ■ Brow lift ■ Temporal lift ■ Scalp advancement ■ Frontal bossing reduction osteotomy (forehead reduction) ■ Nasal tip refifinement ■ Osteoplastic surgery ■ Face-lift ■ Neck-lift ■ Dermal fifillers ■ Cheek augmentation
■ Dimpleplasty ■ Chin reshaping ■ Jaw contouring ■ Upper lip enhancement
■ Tracheal shave (Adam’s apple reduction)
Mardirossian spent several years in Boston training with Dr. Jeffffrey Spiegel, one of the world’s foremost facial plastic surgeons.
Spiegel, Mardirossian explains, has been conducting studies that focus on the perception of human beauty and gender.
Among the noteworthy fifindings, says Mardirossian: “Feminine features increase the attractiveness of the face — regardless of gender.”
Spiegel’s studies,