PUFFINESS

While under eye-puffiness and bags maybe genetic, loss or redistribution of fat may also be a factor. “With time, the fat pads under the eyes can start to protrude,” says Dr. Murphy. “Once there’s a change in the overlying tissue support in front of the fat, it starts to come through as bags, which make the under eyes puffy.” As the skin under the eyes start to thin out, there’s less of a buffer between what’s happening deep under the skin and what shows on the surface. “Bags can get worse with age and high-salt diets,” says Beverly Hills, California, plastic surgeon RANDAL Haworth, M.D.

HOLLOWS

Your plastic surgeon or dermatologist can check the tear trough area (Sometimes extending outward for a natural look) with Restylane, juvederm or fat to rebuild the orbital rim, prevent shadowing and fill in sunken areas. “Belotero is good for under the eyes because the Tyndall effect is less common,” says Dr. Haworth

FIX IT WITH SURGERY

The only way to permanently fix a saggy brow or and hooded or saggy upper eyelids is with surgery. While not everyone may experience those symptoms, they tend to occur together because the upper lid and brows are dependent on one another and an aging brow can affect the look of the lid.”We can treat a saggy brow line with an endoscopic brow lift to correct the shape and reestablish the height. It also cleans up the upper lid without operating on it,” says Dr. Haworth. To address loose skin, an upper blepharoplasty can be performed. A hollowed look, caused by a loss of volume in the brows or upper lid, can be corrected using fat or fillers to plump the area. Often a brow lift and upper blepharoplasty are done together to achieve the most natural results.

 

Is Penelope the key to proving Scott is Mason’s real father?

To support his case, Michael claims Mason and his 13 month old sister Penelope don’t look likeFull siblings. Not true, says Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. RANDAL HAWORTH (who’s not involved with the case): “it’s glaringly evident that Penelope and Mason look-like spitting images.”

How and where we store fat is genetically determined at birth as is the “body type” that we are destined to have throughout life. La Jolla, CA, plastic surgeon Lori Saltz, MD, says, “Some women are ‘apple shaped’ and carry weight in their hips and abdomen while others are ‘pear shaped’ and carry their weight in the butt and thighs. The distribution of fat remains fairly constant as our weight goes up and down. Areas that are problem areas will always be problem areas, regardless of how much weight is gained and lost.” Besides the butt, thighs and stomach, other common problem areas can include the knees and ankles, which tend to be more resistant to weight loss via diet and exercise because they are congenitally predetermined. “The only way to correct fat in these areas is with surgery,” says Beverly Hills, CA, plastic surgeon Randall Haworth, MD.

“I lost weight and now I’m left with all the excess skin that just hangs. Why does that happen and what can I do about it?”
When weight is lost and skin elasticity is poor, the skin can become saggy.”With age, the skin loses elasticity. When the skin is not elastic and able to ‘stretch’ and ‘contract,’ it won’t bounce back post-weight loss, leaving you with too much skin for your new body,” says Dr. Haworth. Pregnancy can also be to blame. “The skin expands during pregnancy, just like with weight gain, losing elasticity. Most times, the skin does not return to its former degree of tightness,” says Dr. Saltz. Minimally loose skin can be treated noninvasively to create new collagen. “When there’s significantly loose skin, it needs to be surgically tightened, removing the excess. Surgery doesn’t improve the physical quality of the skin we simply get rid of anything that’s extra that may not be ‘fitting‘ the body properly,” says Orlando, FL, plastic surgeon Armando Soto, MD.

The Benefit of Fat
It may seem strange to add fat to your body but in the case of volume toss or contour irregularities some doctors feel fat is the best way to correct the problem. “It sounds counterintuitive that fat can make the body look better but in many cases, adding fat to depressed areas can give smoother—looking skin,” says Dr. Soto. “Fat transfer is a good way to add volume–it works well and is permanent. But how the fat is treated [low pressure removal is best] determines how it will survive,” says Dr. Haworth. The Lowdown on Lipo
Before noninvasive treatments and fat-melting devices made their mark on the body-contouring front, Liposuction was the method of choice. While it’s still viewed as the ultimate way to eliminate fat and contour the body, the removed fat can now be used to better the shape of your body by removing it from one area and transferring it to another.

How it Works
Once fat has been suctioned out from the stomach, hips or thighs, your plastic surgeon will strain and wash it with saline, before drying and cleaning it [Dr Saltz says there are more sophisticated methods that include spinning the aspirated fat in a centrifuge or running it through a filtration system]. “If the fat is not rid of any fibers and blood products then more unwanted inflammation will be induced, which will result in more fat resorption,” notes Dr Haworth . From there, the fat is injected into volume-deficient areas. Body fat can also be used to plump up aging areas of the face, too.

Streamline Your Arms
Liposuction is probably the best way to get rid of unwanted fat on the arms. But in order to ensure successful results, the quality of the skin needs to be in good standing. “The more elastic the skin, the better the liposuction results,” says Dr. Haworth. “If there’s too much loose skin in relation to the amount of fat lost, the skin will be left flabby.”

Experts weigh in on 2012’s makeup trends and offer injectible directions for achieving red carpet glow.

Upper Lip:
“The upper lip should allow for tooth show, whereas the lower lip should veil the bottom teeth – when you see an upper lip that’s much fuller than the lower lip, you instantly think it’s fake,” says Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Randal Haworth. “Patients often equate youth with volume, and this is where things go cosmetically awry.” Haworth recommends lip surgery in the form of upper-lip lifts, corner lip lifts and simple V-Y plasties (which involves internal tissue rearrangement) instead of multiple fillers.

Celebrity blogs lit up with speculation that Taylor Swift had undergone plastic surgery after the singer stepped out looking a lot bustier on April 23.

“It appears she’s gone from an A-cup to a C-cup,” Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Randal Haworth tells Life & Style, “But it could be a push-up bra; they’re so well-made these days that it’s almost impossible to tell if a woman is wearing one.”

Taylor (whose rep had no comment) did buy some new push-up bras on April 24, when she spent $600 at Victoria’s Secret in L.A. “Her breasts didn’t look fake to me,” says an eyewitness. “She looked natural and gorgeous.”

Reality star Lo Bosworth is known for her petite frame but has recently been spotted with some new curves!

Life & Style reveals in its new issue — on newsstands now — that the former MTV star went under the knife late last year. “She had a breast enhancement several months ago,” an insider close to the 25-year-old reveals to Life & Style. “It always bothered her that she was so flat, so she got herself a present.”

Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Randal Haworth, who does not treat Lo, estimates that she went up about two cup sizes. “She is clearly fuller,” says Dr. Haworth. “Probably a C-cup.”

Her pal adds, “Lo is very happy with the results.”

Photo credit: Hutchins; Splash

Everyone dreams of the perfect body, perfect face, perfect hair-even perfect feet. But how far would you be willing to go to get those flawless features? Here’s a look at some of the craziest surgeries out there and what you need to know before doing out money for them.

Belly button surgery
Want to turn that outie into an innie? You’re not alone. What you may not know is that many times an outie is caused by a hernia under the skin. In a simple 20-minute procedure, surgeons can fix those aesthetics and also correct a potential health issue.

“The inner fat surrounding your intestines,” explained Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Randal Haworth, “will poke itself out into the belly button and can get strangulated as it gets more and more swollen.” The procedure costs around $5,000 , but insurance will usually cover it.

Blood platelet ‘vampire’ facelifts
No, this won’t give you never-aging skin, but it is a step in that direction. A ‘vampire’ facelift takes your own blood and sends it to a lab to create an injectable filler that is then used to refill sagging or aging skin. Priced from $1,000 to $2,500, this procedure can be used instead of the synthetic fillers currently on the market.

“A lot of this sounds cool and sexy, but the practicality is that it is not that great,” Dr. Haworth said. “The appeal comes from using your own blood,” said Dr. Julius Few, director of the Few Institute for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. “However, it only lasts about a year to a year and a half.” And both surgeons agree that a better option would be a fat transfer. “Fat already has properties in it that make it supercharged,” Dr. Few said. “Especially on faces of color, fat injection is a power tool.”

Eyebrow transplant
At some point, we’ve all experienced the dismay of the overplucked or waxed eyebrow. But if you are one of the few who have experienced unexplained hair loss, the eyebrow transplant may be right for you. “The issues with the eyebrows (is) one you pluck them aggressively, more often than not they won’t grow back,” Dr. Haworth said. This leaves you with one of three possible options: makeup, a tattoo or an eyebrow transplant.

The most common method is to remove hair from the nape of the neck and transplant it to the face. But there are multiple methods and the price can be anywhere from $1,500 to $8,000, so it’s best to first check with a local surgeon. Whichever procedure you choose, the outcome will leave you with beautiful-and in some cases, bushy-brows. “One thing you have to be careful with is (that) the hair will assume the same characteristics as where it originally came from,” Dr. Haworth cautioned, “So if it is more of a tightly wound, kinky hair, it will have that same characteristic no matter where you transplant it to.”

Let us introduce you to L.A. resident Dr. Randal Haworth. While primarily a plastic surgeon known amongst his peers for innovations in the field, he’s also an artist. Dr. Haworth began by hand-drawing medical illustrations and then crossed over into fine art in 2000. His current series “Iconography” has been called “anti-pop realism” by art critic Peter Frank who said Dr. Haworth’s art “synthesizes classic style with Pop Surrealism.”

If you don’t know him for his art, you might know him from his time on Fox’s reality show The Swan, which focused on giving people extreme makeovers, or from his numerous quotes in popular magazines like Life & Style, US Weekly, or Cosmopolitan where he is called on time and time again for his expertise.

When did you know medicine was the path for you? Was it something you always dreamed about as a small child or did it come up later in life?

As an only child, my family really wanted me to be a doctor but my DNA steered me in a more creative route since I excelled in art. As a kid living in England, I saw this BBC program featuring a plastic surgeon and it really stuck with me. At 13, I realized if I was going to be a doctor, it was going to be a plastic surgeon. Plastic surgery embodies a good synthesis of art and science. It really bridges both worlds.

How did you decide to go into plastic surgery?

Same reason, but I took a longer, more arduous route to get where I am. I started in general surgery at Cornell where I treated gunshot wounds, cancer patients, trauma victims, etc. Then I crossed a bridge into plastics when I applied and studied at UCLA.

What are some of the challenges you encounter on daily basis?

I’m kind of in a bizarre field if you think about it. I make healthy people temporarily unwell, while creating and controlling a scar; manipulating tissues so it heals in a way that make the patient more beautiful. The whole process constantly amazes me. So to answer your question, the most challenging aspect is the patient. Being able to figure out who is getting surgery for the right reasons is never easy. My goal is to make them happy, period. So, if I missed their expectation, whether it was reasonable or not, I have failed. I have to figure out who they are and determine whether their unhappiness is more deeply rooted.

What were some of the joys and challenges of participating on a reality TV show?

The entire experience was exciting and different. Don’t get me wrong, it was very hard work. I still had to run my practice full time while doing the show, and The Haworth Institute was completely booked throughout the weekends.

For the show, we always did two separate surgical sessions for safety reasons. We did the facial surgeries first, and everything always took a tremendous amount of coordination.

At the time, the show was extremely controversial. The naysayers proclaimed that it was exploitation. However, I found that it was a very emotional experience. These people got the chance to change their lives and they were very appreciative. Their tears brought tears to everyone on staff, myself included.

Tell us a bit about your artwork. How did you get into art, and what media do you work in?

I have always been interested in art- both creating and collecting. My first show “Memories Lost” was at the BGH Gallery/Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. This body of work comprised photorealistic graphite drawings of missing children and adults. My next series was entitled “Icongraphy” and focused upon modern culture through anachronistic figurative images rendered in acrylic on canvas. A preview of “Icongraphy” was staged at The James Gray Gallery in Santa Monica and the official showing was at the prestigious Karen Lynne Gallery in Beverly Hills. “Icongraphy” was a tongue and cheek play on society about the vapid culture and consumerism. The paintings were from olden times manipulated with modern features.

My next series is more authentic. As a plastic surgeon, people think I shouldn’t be taken seriously as an artist. That doesn’t stop me because I’m going to do something that I’ve always dreamed of. I’m taking super-close photos of surgical scenes and blowing them up. I will then use the image as the inspiration as I paint it so closely that the audience won’t know exactly what they are looking at. It will be vaguely unsettling since it has no perspective.

Do you feel your artwork has evolved with the evolution of your profession as a plastic surgeon?

Good question, I have become a better plastic surgeon after painting because it has really allowed me to appreciate minute things. It’s a good lesson for me to be able to appreciate the super subtle details like a little shadow on the corner of a mouth. For me, painting really upped the ante, even though I never had any formal painting training. There are many talented artists, many more talented than me, but being a plastic surgeon, in terms of tweaking the human form, helped me tremendously.

We are familiar with your Icongraphy series. How did this series come to be?

I simply wanted to paint! I saw what was happening in the world, and was influenced by lowbrow art. Icongraphy was in a sense an internal dialogue with myself. The paintings all had messages.

Do you sense a shift in your artwork is on the horizon or are you not done with Icongraphy?

I think I made a statement with Icongraphy, but as for right now I’m done with it. I may return back eventually, but I want to test the waters of other genres. I’m turning my focus on abstract ways of communication.

What’s up next for you?

My interests are with abstract and realism at the moment. I’m inspired by Glenn Brown and the various artists from Romania. As for plastic surgery goes, it is an evolution and not a real seismic shift. I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing, and incorporating the latest technology into my business. It takes a while make sure it is worth investing in or not since a lot of new technology is rubbish. Plastic surgery is a bizarre field!

Where are you from originally and what was the transition like to Los Angeles?

I have moved away and back to Los Angeles three separate times. I was born here but went to boarding school in England until I was 17. Having lived in San Francisco and New York City as well, it definitely took awhile to get accustomed back to L.A. due to the difference in East coast vs. West coast attitude. In New York, people are much more forward with their opinions, which I personally enjoy because I think ultimate politeness involves truth. In L.A. you never know if people are just being polite, or actually authentic.

What is the prevailing attitude surrounding plastic surgery in Los Angeles? Are there any unresolved social stigmas people need to be wary of when considering going under the knife?

I think it is still evolving, but Los Angeles is a lot more open when it comes to plastic surgery. People openly talk about surgery, and as a result, it holds surgeons to a higher standard. Since clients discuss who did their nose, boobs, etc, the surgeon’s work is under extreme scrutiny. As opposed to the more private East coast, Los Angelos are not ashamed to have had work done.

Plastic surgery is still an aesthetic field, so the social stigma is basically not to look fake. In a town where appearance means everything, the stigma is not looking good. So many of my clients come to me because they want their change to look natural. They don’t want anyone to notice that they got plastic surgery, but they want people to notice they are better looking. I always tell them “Everyone will notice, but not everyone will know.”

There are many things to love and loathe about L.A.; what are your favourite and least favourite aspects?

Love: The places that remind me of the long, bygone era of Hollywood in its golden years- The 20’s, 30’s, and even 40’s. It was a unique time with a unique look and feel that no other city in the world can mimic. Places such as Greystone mansion, Los Feliz, Silverlake, and the Spanish Moorish-inspired houses have distinctive, glamorous qualities to them.

I also love the sense of freedom you get when driving with the top down in the car. The weather is unparalleled.

Loathe: Parts of L.A. are ugly from an aesthetic standpoint with the endless sprawling suburban neighborhoods. L.A. also attracts the best and worst of people. The hard part is circumventing the treacherous waters of figuring out who your true friends are.

Everybody needs great pizza. Where do you go when you want to indulge in a slice?

Mozza Pizzeria on Melrose is this pizza shop with the same owners of the high-end Italian place next to it. It’s phenomenal.

L.A. is replete with some amazing art galleries. Do you have any recommendations?

As a collector, I recommend the Hammer and the Robert Berman Gallery at Bergamot Station. I am on the acquisition committee for the MOCA, so I appreciate that L.A. is the epicenter of art; I think the local galleries’ quality reflects that. There are three other amazing galleries in Culver City worth noting: Blum and Poe, Cherry and Martin, and Mihai Nicodim.

What keeps you in L.A.?

My job and my friends keep me here. I think it’s an exciting time to be in L.A. as it is becoming more and more multicultural. There’s a Chinese proverb, “May you live in interesting times” and L.A. is certainly interesting.

How would you describe L.A. in one word?

Unpredictable

Click here to view The Metro Seeker’s full article on Dr Haworth.
Click here to view Dr. Haworth’s artwork.

Dr. Randal Haworth provides colorful commentary in this March 2012 Issue of Us Weekly:

• Dianna Agron
  HAWORTH: Her legs are draining all the color from her dress.
  JAMESON: Dianna Far-Gone.
  GARFINKEL: Channeling her inner Madeline.
• Taylor Swift
  JAMESON: Kanye should have interrupted this moment instead.
  HAWORTH: At least she’s not wearing her surprised face.
  MILLER: Not evne a Taylor could make that dress work.

Us Weekly

• Dr. Randal Haworth is recognized as a “TOP COP” for the Fashion Police in this February 2012 issue of Us Weekly