Understanding The Importance of Lip Transitions When Creating Natural Looking Lips

I have been thinking about transitions from the red lip to the non-red lip because of two women that I saw in the past few days.  First, there was a woman who came from Oklahoma that had these hanging red lips towards the corners of her mouth that looked like a fish.  She had only those side areas injected with silicone because she wanted to make them look fuller.  But a natural lip should taper gently to nothing as it reaches the corners of the mouth.  Instead, hers bulged as it reached the corner of the mouth.  I performed a lip reduction to correct her problem.  The second lady that I saw insisted on having fillers placed into the sides of her lips because she said she drooled at night.  I explained that functionally I do not think filling those sides would help her not drool but more importantly it would look terribly unnatural.  Remember that I truly understand how lips should naturally look, and I ask you to defer to my better judgment when designing your lips so that they stay natural in appearance to all passersby.

Lips that fail to taper to the corners of the mouth look unnatural, which has been corrected through surgical lip reduction.

Samuel M. Lam, MD, FACS is a board certified plastic surgeon, specializing in lip reduction and lip enhancement procedures . For more info, or to schedule a consultation please call 972.312.8105. If you would like to ask Dr Lam a question please visit our lip surgery forum.