Pillow Face: The New Hollywood Fashion

  • Posted on: Mar 20 2012
  • By:

What is going on with all the Pillow Faces in Hollywood?  There’s been a rash of them lately, each one seemingly worse than the next.  A Pillow Face is the term used when a person has overplumped cheeks, causing them to look like a Cabbage Patch Doll or as if they’re storing nuts for the winter.  Here are some Hollywood stars who appear to have exhibited Pillow Faces of late:

1. Ashley Judd – This natural beauty recently resurfaced to promote her new show Missing.  What’s really missing, though, are the wrinkles in her forehead and her previous appearance.  She and her reps have denied plastic surgery, instead blaming her puffy cheeks on a combination of steroid treatments and a sinus infection.  To read more about Ashley Judd’s face, click HERE for the MSNBC.com article and HERE for the RadarOnline.com article, both with my quotes.

2. Ellen Pompeo – Has Gray changed her facial Anatomy by getting a Pillow Face?  Looks like it!  Click HERE to see recent photos.

3. Lindsay Lohan – Not only are her cheeks overly puffy, but so is the rest of her face.  Click HERE to see what’s the scoop with LiLo.

4. Madonna – The Material Girl just might be the originator of the Pillow Face.  Click HERE for a photo.

Why are there so many stars sporting a Pillow Face and why didn’t we see it before?

Up until recently, most plastic surgeons considered facial aging to be a two-dimensional process.  They believed that aging caused the face to sag, hence the treatments all involved lifting.  This created the wind-tunnel looks of many of the older facelift and plastic surgery patients.  One of my mentors, Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, was among the first to describe facial aging as a 3-dimensional process, one that involved sagging PLUS deflation.  We described this in our 2004 article, The Volumetric Facelift.  Now all sorts of plastic (and non-plastic) surgeons have realized that proper facial rejuvenation surgery requires a combination of tightening loose skin PLUS adding volume to treat deflation.

Unfortunately, some of these doctors are going way, way overboard.  Instead of a conservative filling-in of the cheeks, they’re plumping faces as if blowing up a balloon.  Hence, the dreaded Pillow Face.

As for most things in life, moderation is the key.  A little volume is a great thing.  A lot of volume makes a person look not like a Man, but like a Muppet.

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in: Dr. Anthony Youn in the Media

Accessibility Toolbar