Orange County Register

Photos: Above and in the middle of  this file, photos on the left show Barbara Walters with a “Joker line” between her mouth and ear. That hollow area of her face could be eliminated with filler to look like the two Photoshopped images on the right, says Dr. Val Lambros. (Photos courtesy of Dr. Lambros)

JOKER BE GONE

Plastic surgeon Dr. Val Lambros of Newport Beach has a suggestion for TV journalist Barbara Walters:

Spend $2,000 to fix your facelift. Well, actually, facelifts.

“She has probably had more than one,” he told last week’s online “In Your Face CHAT.”

“You can see in a progression of pictures where her cheeks look more hollow and bony. This is from her facelifts.”

The long hollows between her mouth and her ears are called “Joker lines” because they make the face look a bit like the Joker on Batman.

Those hollows can be eliminated with injections of filler, he says.

“By filling in the hollow, you make the face look more natural and less pulled,” he said.

“It is a classic sign of`an unnatural facelift.”

Any of a variety of fillers will do the trick, he said.

“If I am doing a procedure in the operating room, I would use fat to do it. Otherwise Restylane or Juvederm work well and last about a year and a half in that location.”

The following photos show Walters and her Joker line (left) next to a Photoshopped image of what Lambros says she could look like with filler (right).

Lambros said he performs this procedure on five to 10 patients per year.

“It’s not commonly known that you can do this,” he said.

Joker lines are a common problem among older people who had facelifts in the 1970’s and 1980’s, he said.

The photos above  show one of Lambros’s non-celebrity patients before (left) and after filling of her Joker lines.

In the “before” photo she has “a classic Joker line,” he said.

In the “after” photo, she has been injected with filler and, as a result, Lambros said, “She looks much more natural.”

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