Facial Feminization Surgery: What Makes A Face Feminine?

Have you ever thought about what makes a face feminine? According to one of the surgeons who pioneered facial feminization surgery, what makes a face feminine isn’t easy to define.

“We hear beauty is only skin deep; it’s not,” Spiegel says. “It has to do a lot with the bones. When we change the face, I need to change the bones. And then the skin is almost like clothing. If a woman puts on a man’s shirt it still looks like a woman…. so the skin, if it sits on the right way on the facial structures, we start to get the right cues.”

As Lauren Silverman from Here & Now member station KERA in Dallas reports, that can make it tricky for people in the transgender community thinking about having surgery. She speaks with Spiegel and Renee Baker, a transgender woman who traveled from Dallas to Boston to receive the surgery.

• Read more via KERA

Reporter

• Lauren Silverman, reporter for KERA News in Dallas. She tweets @lsilverwoman.

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