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Last year, more men received cosmetic injections in their faces than ever before.
Millennium Images / Gallery Stock
Of course, in classic style, the movement was branded Bro-tox.
About 200,000 men received soft-tissue fillers from plastic surgeons, compared to just under 100,000 in 2017.
I was one of them!
Melissa Doft, a plastic surgeon in Manhattan, poked beneath my cheekbones, sculpting a new geometry.
Her white coat was accessorized with an Italian belt and shoes.
For me, its about shaping, she told me, not necessarily adding volume.
She handed me a mirror.
The face staring back at me was familiar but had also changed tectonically.Justa little filler.
Light falling from overhead fluorescents now spilled down twin ridges, casting twin shadows.
I think it looks quite masculine, Doft said admiringly.
The aesthetic version of masculine is hard, angular, intrusive.
We know this from history.
The ideal form emphasizes a sculpted musculature, bulked and cut.
This goes for above the neck too.
A caricature of male beauty is big in all the right places, from glutes to biceps to masseters.
We are all holding more or less the same image in our minds.
I think they just want to look fresher, healthier, and more handsome, Dr. Belkin added.
Straight men are the lowest penetrance of being open to this stuff.
Since then, Ive become known as a face-sculpting specialist, he said.
Its part of how the makeup artistPatrick Taremains pleasingly angled.
I recommend it to a straight guy, and they look amazing, he said.
Most guys want to look masculine and handsome, whether theyre gay or straight.
A dermatologist hypothesized toEsquirethat this was the result of bad neurotoxin placement.
In his monologue, Stephen Colbert said Gaetz looked like if the Joker worked at Sephora.
Never mind that many of our nations presidents have been scaffolded by the cosmetic-surgical arts.
Theyre worried that anything they do is going to feminize them, Dr. Belkin said.
The feminine ideal refracts softness: pillowy lips, soft cheeks.
Most fillers help accentuate these curves and contours and are distinctly reapplied in male faces.
There are fundamental differences in facial topography between genders, Dr. Belkin explained.
Mens filler goes to the apple, while womens filler sits higher up on the cheekbones.
The style of filler differs too.
Those recommended to men often have a higher G-prime level, which makes them denser and more bonelike.
It gives a chiseled look, Dr. Belkin said.
He may also dilute it with lidocaine and inject it in the hollows beneath the cheeks.
The ideal male work is invisible.
For men, a drop makes a splash.
When I asked Dr. Belkin what injectables hes tried, he seemed briefly surprised by the question.
Then he spilled: regular Botox, some laser, a little cheek filler once upon a time.
Super subtle, he said, but I like it.
