ArteFill: Stories

You are beautiful. You want a little character in your face, you don't want perfect Barbie. People can tell you've had work when you go too smooth and tight. After enough years and surgery a woman looks like the Joker from Batman when they get so stretched from lifts and overfilled their mouth stretches across their face...you know which celebrity women I'm talking about. You are a really, very pretty young woman. Enjoy it, enjoy life. Love yourself the way you are. You look perfect.

How much did it cost to do the undereye lift?Can you please recommend the doctor?

That is alot of filler for someone your age, but we all age differently so don't beat yourself up too much about the age factor. I work at a medspa - and have been getting injections of Juvederm and Radiesse for years. It looks like your injector put most of the filler in the zygomatic area (cheekbones) and you said a bit went into the nasolabial, but the pre-jowl sulcus/chin area was ignored. Some additional filler in that area will soften the appearance of jowling, along with some botox in your mentalis muscle to help soften that line across your chin. Honestly a face lift will not correct facial fat/volume loss, and most people who get mini lifts still need filler! A facial fat transfer would probably give the best effect, but its surgery, and still is not permanent but lasts longer than fillers. You have a very pretty face and I share your pain with sagging skin! Though I'm 45 it still is exasperating sometimes to be a slave to fillers...but I'm just not ready to look at facial surgery yet because as I said before, that won't solve the problem of fat loss in the face. I say get a little more filler to soften out the look of the jowling and you will be alot more comfortable with it.

I'm only 37 and I had a mini-facelift (s-lift), it was around $6,500. It helped a lot with jowling, my neck and my overall profile. I'm not super happy with the nasolabial/malar aspect of the surgery. I don't feel my malar area was helped much, but it did pull it up a bit.

I tanned my heiney off and was also a smoker for a long time, hence the early aging.

I would suggest a mini-lift, and try to get them to add on a cheek suspension for free or reduced price. they just have to go further up into the temporal scalp and pull up the malar pad with a long suture. I think they can also do suture plication, which also isn't a full blown cheek lift. This could save you some money. You could say you had a friend who had it added on from her surgeon, try to bargain (but stick with a decent surgeon).

Best of luck

First, you are very pretty and I don't see you and think, wow she looks old. I suppose we are all our hardest critics but you do NOT look prematurely aged! BUT if you want a teeny bit more ( be careful not to overfill) go get radiesse or juvederm (research them thoroughly to figure out where and how and who to go to) for those teeny tiny areas you don't like. Actually when I go to the doc for filler I aim to look more like you -- so you are very lucky whether you know it or not!

Since there are no captions on your photos its hard to tell if these are all after shots, or if there are some befores as well.

I don't blame you for not wanting to spend more money. 6 syringes sounds like quite a bit, but I'm really not sure what the usual amount is. Was it the doctor who did the injections that recommended the other procedures to consider, or someone else?