Can My Face Be Changed To Look Like Someone Else?

Q: Dr. Eppley, I  am sending you pictures of my face and how I want to look like at the end of surgery. The first 3 is me, the last 2 is how I want to look like.  I believe we will need a nose job, mouth reduction, and some facial bones work. 

A: Thank you for sending your pictures and demonstrating your objectives. First, let me make some general statements about your facial enhancement objectives. If your goal is to look very close to the pictures you have shown, that is not a realistic goal. Besides some similarities in skin color (actually his skin is much lighter than yours) he has a completely different facial bone structure and soft tissue makeup. Your facial structures are radically different. Thus there is no way with any surgical procedures that you are going to look remotely like him. It is simply not possible. You can not be made to look like someone else. You can be a better facially balanced and proportioned you but you can not be him. While I understand why his face and those objectives are appealing, you will have to focus on what you do within the limits of change in your own face.

What I see on your face that can be improved is the following.

1) Your facial bone structure is known as bimaxillary protrusion where the jaws and the teeth stick out. That can not be changed but your chin is comparatively very short. A sliding genioplasty to move the chin forward would improve your facial proportions.

2) Your nose is very classic being low and broad. Building up the nose with a rib graft rhinoplasty and narrowing the nose will create more of a narrow and slimmer looking nose. Your thick nasal skin prevents your nose from ever being very refined but this will help.

3) You have a tremendous amount of lip tissue, particularly in the size of the exposed vermilion. (pink tissue) An upper and lower lip reduction will help although there is a limit as to how much lip reduction can be achieved.

I have done some imaging which is attached so you can see how these proposed changes may help in a realistic facial enhancement effort.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana