My visit to LA Plastic Surgeons by Dr. Philip Young of Seattle | Bellevue: I had a wonderful time during my visit with Dr Jason Diamond and Dr Davis Nguyen in Los Angeles In March of 2010.  I was also originally going to see Dr Ellenbogen but choose instead the other two surgeons.  During my visit I saw 2 rhinoplasties, a facelift, necklift, premaxillary implant, nasal reconstruction, browlift, fat injections, upper and lower blepharoplasties, and chin implant.  Dr Nguyen is actually a good friend of mine so it was nice to see him in action once more.  I always try to visit surgeons where ever I go to try to learn something new.  You shouldn’t live life as if you were on an island.  My feeling is that you can always learn something new from anybody no matter how smart or not as smart they are.  I had a great time visting Dr Diamond and I really enjoyed getting to know him better as well.  Everybody does things and procedures differently.  With all the hours of experience that each person gains on their own is valuable experience that you can learn from others.  This allows me to continually improve.  I think visiting surgeons is a neccessity.  It is likely more important than the various meetings that we go to as facial plastic surgeons. Continual medical education are recorded as hourly credits that you can earn when you go the meetings held by your specialty.  For me my academy is called the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.  I try to attend a meeting every year to continually learn.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

Why have we taken so long to figure out what makes us beautiful.  Even today’s most up to date theories on beauty are based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s Neoclassical Canons.  One rule is the rule of thirds where the distance from the hairline to the area in between the eyes is equal to the distance from there to the bottom of the nose, which is in turn equal to the distance from the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin.  His rules go on and on with different measurements.  It has been shown by many researchers that these measurements and rules really don’t define beauty let alone a major percentage of the population (ie Farkas and colleagues). Others have attempted to answer this question by using the greek number phi.  Some have taken great lengths to prove this like Dr Marquadt.  But all this number is, I’m sorry fellow researchers, is really just the proportion of 2/3’s and 1/3’s which many things in nature can be explained by.  Furthermore all of these theories are based on landmarks on the face that are easily identifiable (such as the hairline, inside and outside of the eyes) but really don’t grasp our attention when we view a face.  As I explained earlier, the iris grasps most of our attention and because of this, it dictates almost everything on our face and the basics of beauty are derived from its shape and width.  But these theories did dominate our thinking because essentially it was easier to form a theory based on these easily identified landmarks.  It is much harder to define beauty based on shades of light which the Circles of Prominence is based on.  But these shades of light are what our brains use to determine much of the beauty in our faces.

The other reason beauty was hard to find was due to the many beautiful faces out there that were very close to the ideal but varied from it by very small increments.  Because of all of these beautiful people, easily identifiable elements were hard to pin down.  Furthermore, because beauty is determined largely by these subtleties of light the ideal was harder to find.

The way we sense beauty itself probably has played a huge factor in keeping us from the secrets.  First of all we sense beauty from the right brain.  But, we think concretely and mathematically about our world form the left brain.  In essence, there was a continental divide.  Why is this important? Well our brains are separated from each side based on simple anatomy. The right and left brains are connected by the corpus collusum which is much smaller than the right and left brains.  Hence we communicate with the right and left brains through this smaller conduit and hence a lot of information is lost. The side of the brain that we appreciate beauty is separated by the side of our brain that is trying to identify those elements that we find beautiful.

To further expound on this thought, many parts of our brain sense beauty.  When we see someones lips, the parts of the brain that senses the touch from our own lips is in another part of the brain separated from our right part that senses beauty mostly.  Also the part of our brain that interprets and makes us sense emotions also plays an important part in our interpretation of beauty.  When we see a beautiful person, our hearts beat stronger and our blood pressure rises and this is located in the deep parts of our brain called the autonomic system at the base of the brain.  This part of the brain which senses beauty is even more further from the left concrete and mathematical part of our brain.

More to come…

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

Part of figuring out the answer to facial beauty is determining whether there is an ideal.  The idea of facial beauty and a Facial Beauty to explain it would have to mean that there is an ideal in order to define it.  The mere idea that there is beauty would indicate that there are some people who are more beautiful than others and vice versa.  Then further reasoning would lead us to say that there are extremes.  At the one extreme is the most beautiful and the other is the least beautiful.  Hence, there is an ideal at the most beautiful extreme.

If there is an ideal then how does the mantra “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” play into a theory on beauty.  When finding a mate, my personal thoughts on this is that people are still attracted to people who are extremely beautiful but not all people are able to fall in love with these people and have them fall in love with them back.  Many times, a person can end up with a companion that is equally attractive as compared to themselves because they are able to tolerate that particular level of beauty because a person usually can appreciate self beauty to a significant degree.  Herein, lies some of the truth to the eye of the beholder popular saying.  But, true beauty is not really in the eye of the beholder and there is an ideal out there that a large proportion of the population will concomitantly agree is beautiful.

This same principle applies to ethnicity and beauty.  There is a fairly well known research paper that took a population of Japanese and American people and they were asked to rate a group of women that were Japanese and another group that were Caucasian.  Both the Japanese and American populations found the same Japanese and Caucasian women attractive.  Other studies support this, that there is beauty that transcends ethnic variations.  Also other research, have shown that children that are 3 months old (who have not developed cultural influences that could affect there appreciation of beauty) spend more time looking at people who are more attractive than those that are not as attractive. This further supports that there is a true beauty out there that we can define better.

How does ethnicity fit in?  My theory is that ethnicity can enhance beauty by showing the person determining whether it exists in the face they are looking at a variation of something that is very close to the ideal.  You can have very small changes from the ideal and have a remarkably different looking face yet still look extremely attractive.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

My last blog set a foundation for further refinement of my theory.  Once I determined that the major units were the eye, nose and mouth and the most important objects that were within each unit were the iris, nasal tip and lower lip. I then discovered that other things began to fit together more clearly.  The more and more I looked at these relations, I began to elucidate many questions that have perplexed surgeons and theorists alike.  One of the questions regarded the ideal location of the arch of the eyebrow.  If you look at the major textbooks out there, the ideal location of the arch of the eyebrow is not exactly known.  Most theorists believe that the arch should be located at the same vertical location as the lateral canthus or lateral corner of the eye.  Some others say the lateral limbus or the lateral part of the iris.  All previous rules were dependent on external landmarks that really didn’t make sense for viewers of a face.  I didn’t explain why the arch was ideally located in one place or the other.  You see, many previous theories focused on external landmarks that did not play a prominent role in a person’s assessment of beauty.  Beauty has to be dependent on what we spend most of our time looking at.  The iris occupies the attention of the viewer of a face the most.  Then it is the nasal tip and the lower lip.  The importance of the nasal tip and iris create a relation with one another that dictates a strong influence on our perception of beauty.  Other elements of the face need to be in order, or in line, with this relationship.  When you look at the eyebrow and the highlights that it creates, you will see that the arch of the eyebrow is really an by product of something else that is important.  The highlight under the arch is really what is most important.  This highlight should line up with the iris and nasal tip in order for the highlight to be in order with this relationship that the iris and nasal tip creates.  With this in mind, take a look at the most beautiful people in the world and you will notice how these things line up: iris, nasal tip, and the lateral eyebrow highlight (the reflection of light under the arch of the eyebrow).  It is this relationship that secondarily determines where the arch of the eyebrow is most ideal.

This relationship of the iris and nasal tip also dictates where the cheek shadowing should markedly darken. See my paper for a diagram.  This cheek shadowing should continue posteriorly and superiorly to eventually dictate where the top of the ear is most ideally located. Up to this point, no one has been able to figure out where the ear should sit.  My theory, breaks down and elucidates just where that ear most ideally sits.

More to come….

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

What are those shapes? Well within that oval the anatomical major units are the eyes, nose and mouth.  These major units must be symmetrically arranged and the units must be arranged in an orderly manner.  How is this possible? Well what I thought was important was to find out what shapes are the most important within each of those major units.  Within the eye, the iris is what I concluded was the most important.  Within the nose, the nasal tip is the most important.  Within the lip, the lower lip is the most important and specifically the center of the lower lip.  These shapes; the iris, nasal tip, and center of the lower lip must be balanced among each other.  When there is balance between the iris, nasal tip and lower lip a very important element of beauty is reached.  What I found and was able to scientifically prove to a degree is that when the distance from the iris to the midline, distance from the horizontal level of the iris to nasal tip, the distance from the nasal tip to the lower lip, and the distance from the lower lip to the bottom of the chin is equal to each other a very basic level of beauty is found to be present within that particular face. When this not present the imbalance of these relations starts to create tension between the anatomical units of the face.  When the iris is closer to the nasal tip the major unit of the eye and nose starts to get crowded and this tension creates a sense of uneasiness to the viewer and hence less beauty is assessed from the viewer.  When they are more in balance more beauty is achieved. You can read more about this by reading my paper.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington

This is a follow up to my discussion about how I began to do what I do and what my fascination is regarding facial plastic surgery.  During residency, we were required to write a scientific paper.  These beginnings into research gradually directed me into my current strong interest in the field of facial aesthetics or the theories regarding facial beauty.  I knew that I wanted to make a strong contribution to my field but I didn’t want to write on a frivolous subject.  So I looked into issues that could make a big impact.  In one of my blogs, I talked about how I found that our current understand of facial beauty were still based on theories that were from the 1400’s with little improvement in our understanding.  These rules that we were still basing our decision making on were called the neo classical canons from Leonardo Da Vinci.  It has been only recently in the past few years that we have begun to find in our scientific discovery that these rules don’t differentiate the beautiful from the average.  Dr Farkas wrote a lot of papers on this subject.  Some people have found that averageness is beautiful.  Another author found in his study of inmates, to look for facial characteristics that would suggest a greater tendency to commit crimes, took the average proportions of the inmates to look for these traits. What he found was that the average proportions actually created a face that was more beautiful than the rest of the inmates.  This is were averageness is beautiful as an idea became popular.  Further studies by Perett and colleagues, published in Nature, have shown that something more than average creates beautiful.   But we still didn’t know the answers.

One night, when I was in Syracuse for an interview. I couldn’t sleep.  My mind was busily thinking about the answer to facial beauty.  It was then that I had an “aha” moment, when I discovered the Circles of Prominence.  I knew that a theory had to be based on something that we concentrated on a lot when we look at the face.  Naturally I looked to the eyes.  But what was it that was important.  I concluded that it was the iris, the colored portion of the eyes.  That is probably the reason why our whites are so stark white to bring out contrast of the iris color.  The other idea that I found very useful during my studies in mathematics is the values zero and infinity.  Most all numbers are between these to extremes.  In the face there has to be an ideal from zero and infinity.  If we spend so much time looking at the iris, my feeling was that the iris was that ideal between zero and infinity.  Hence the width of the nasal bridge, nasal tip size, distance from the nose to the upper lip, the height of the lower lip are all one iris width.From there I started thinking about the other rules of facial beauty.  You can read more about this by reading my paper.

Thanks for reading, Dr Young

Dr Young specializes in Facial Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery and is located in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington