Male to Female (MTF) Cosmetic Surgery: It’s All About the Nuances

Cosmetic treatments have a key role to play in realizing a notably feminine appearance, and many procedures—both nonsurgical and surgical—can be used to help you feminize your face and body. Working with a cosmetic surgeon experienced in transgender aesthetics, you can choose the options that will best achieve your desired degree of feminization based on your anatomy, timeline, and budget.

At my Las Vegas cosmetic surgery office, I encourage my MTF gender-confirmation patients to consider their goals in three categories of surgery that I perform: gender-confirming MTF top surgery (including breast augmentation), body contouring, and facial feminization surgery (FFS). While MTF breast augmentation is perhaps the most talked about procedure, facial feminization and body contouring play a pivotal role in MTF cosmetic surgery. Below, I share some of the ways I create feminine contours on the face and body.

Facial Feminization: Scaffolding Features

The goal of facial feminization is multifaceted, and it differs depending on the features you’re starting with. Typically-feminine faces have a smooth, flat brow line, sweeping jaw curve that projects just slightly, and full cheeks. The feminine nose tends to be shorter and narrower, with a smaller tip—the nose is so impactful that a cosmetic nose procedure alone can achieve striking facial feminization.

While it may seem like a full facial feminization process would involve a lot of surgery to soften pronounced masculine features, much can be accomplished with nonsurgical techniques. I take a holistic aesthetic approach that involves treating key facial features in steps. Here are some of the ways I can feminize the face:

• Soften brow furrows with dermal fillers
• Temporarily reshape and contour the nose with artfully-injected dermal fillers for a nonsurgical “nose job”
• Narrow and shorten the nose, as well as refine the tip, with rhinoplasty
• Lift and boost fullness in the cheeks with fillers
• Smooth creases around the nose and mouth with fillers
• Create a permanently tapered jawline that projects slightly forward and balances naturally with the nose using chin implants
• Smooth a square or angular jawline with dermal fillers, softening angles to sculpt a sweeping curve
• Add plumpness to the lips with injectable lip fillers
• Inject long-lasting volume in the lips, cheeks, and around the nose and mouth with facial fat transfer

An eminently useful tool for facial feminization, dermal filler injections provide volume and “lift” that allows my MTF patients to visualize how much facial contouring they want (and where they want it) before committing to a surgical procedure. The results are long-lasting but temporary, anywhere from 3 to 24 months.

MTF Body Contouring Surgery: 360° Curves

A feminine shape is characterized by curves on both the front and the back of the body, so your cosmetic surgeon should take a comprehensive, 360° approach to feminizing your figure. The best gender affirmation surgical results come from combining breast augmentation with additional sculpting of the torso, hips, buttocks, and legs.

For MTF body contouring, I use fat transfer, which involves sculpting fat away from one area with liposuction, purifying the fat, and re-injecting it into other areas of the body, such as the buttocks or breasts. I use ultrasound-assisted VASER Liposelection, which has numerous benefits compared with traditional liposuction:

• Allows for detailed sculpting
• Gently releases fat, with less impact on surrounding tissues
• Results in higher-quality fat for transplanting
• Requires less downtime after surgery and an easier recovery

By carefully sculpting fat from specific points on the waist, hips, thighs, and torso, a qualified cosmetic surgeon can achieve gorgeous results throughout the body:

• Narrow the waist to create the appearance of wider hips
• Sculpt the upper torso to create a more slender appearance
• Inject fat into the buttocks to create a fuller, rounder backside (similar to a Brazilian butt lift)
• Remove fat from the lower back, waist and thighs to accentuate roundness of the buttocks
• Transfer fat to the anterior/outer hips, which is key to transforming the lines of the body and creating an hourglass shape
• Sculpt a more slender, feminine shape to the thighs, knees or ankles.

Compared with adding breast implants alone to the figure, these fat sculpting and injecting steps will take you much further towards an hourglass shape. Fat transfer is an art, and it can be both ineffective and risky in the hands of an inexperienced surgeon. Thus, while the procedure is relatively common, I urge you to seek an experienced gender affirming cosmetic surgeon who uses more advanced techniques, such as VASER, for both your safety and for natural, stunning results.

Looking for Las Vegas gender confirmation surgery?

At my Las Vegas cosmetic surgery practice, we offer body, breast, and facial contouring for gender confirmation. All surgeries are completed in my fully accredited on-site operating suite, and we are happy to accommodate out of town patients. To learn more and schedule a consultation, call us at 702.363.0240 or contact us online. My team and I sincerely look forward to helping you look and feel yourself.