It Happened To Me: I Had The Fat Sucked Out Of My Chin And Became An Entirely Different Person

You can judge me or think I'm vain, but my only regret about getting submentoplasty is that I didn't do it sooner. Check out my before and after photos and tell me if you could even possibly disagree.

Hello, Sunday readers! I am running out the door to have mine, which involves lots of old friends that I haven’t spent as much time with lately because I’ve been spending it with you friends (also awesome), so I’m psyched (and late!) and want to leave you with this story that I love. It is written by one of your own — commenter Dana who was so sweetly and insightfully active in the AJPT comments that I asked her if she wanted to submit her own story. And she came through big-time, as you will see here.

I hope you get something out of it, as I most certainly did. There is one line in that KILLS me it’s so good, but I will let you read it first and save that for the comments. Also, is there anyone out there who doesn’t love to see Before and After pictures (and a somewhat startling During)? So thank you, Dana, for those, as well!

I love you all and have wonderful days however you like them.

xo Jane

Eighth-grade school play (I played a jewel thief who was very good at crossword puzzles.)

By Dana Walker Inskeep

I had the fat sucked out of my chin and became an entirely different person. Well, something like that.

Dr. Aric Park—a flawless facial plastic surgeon and god among men—completely changed the way I viewed myself.

The year was 2019. My husband and I had just sold our first home that we’d kept as a rental property for two years, thinking it’d be a good second income stream. Turns out being a landlord is even less fun than it sounds and if we held on to it any longer we’d have had to pay capital gains taxes, thereby making it more of an expense than anything.

Most of that money went into him starting a carpentry business, but we decided that we’d use some of it for personal improvement purposes. So he got Lasik and I got submentoplasty. (That’s the technical term for a chin tuck.)

What that means is that I had the fat cells located in the bottom of my face liposuctioned out. I’d always had a double chin, regardless of my weight. It was so pronounced that it looked like it joined my neck at a 45° angle, and I was born feeling self-conscious about it.

Literally, the only regret that I have in this life is that I didn’t have it done sooner.

It completely changed the way I view myself. Now every time I look in the mirror, I don’t cringe and stand there with my thumbs pressed into the crease where chin meets neck, wishing for a way to walk around with my face in an invisible sling that no one would notice but that would turn that turkey waddle jawline into a normal chin.

I realize this makes me sound vain, but hear me out.

I was a teenager in the late 1980s, and your teenage years are when most of us solidify our opinions about the way we look. I hated basically everything about my body. I was overweight and even at my thinnest couldn’t hit that 125 pound target that doctors insisted all girls of my height should weigh. I also have a long torso and short legs, which meant the bright, baggy clothing styles of the time make me look like a neon potato in jellies.

But that chin. Ughhhhhh…that was the tipping point. It took me out of the “At least she has a pretty face” category and straight into “This fat ugly bitch will never have a boyfriend.” (That was my opinion, anyway.)

So maybe I should start near the beginning.

At some point in my childhood, probably around age four, I noticed that I had two chins. It didn’t really matter how much I weighed, really (although that swing was up and down 30-50 pounds every few years for my entire life up until recently)…my face was always fat and round and my chin didn’t slope straight back or slightly up into my neck.

First grade, doing my best Little Lord Fauntleroy impression (but with two chins).

Never mind that this isn’t entirely uncommon and other people who have this look absolutely fine…on my head it was completely unacceptable.

And honestly, I don’t really recall if someone ever pinpointed this particular feature about me to verbally eviscerate…but I’m sure they did, because my entire childhood and early adulthood were filled with people who thought they had a right to make comments about my appearance. In fact, back then I believed that they did, too, and based my entire self-acceptance on those opinions.

Regardless, my double chin was the thing that I’d always been the most insecure about…even more than my body being consistently overweight, believe it or not.

I was convinced that not having that extra chin and a half would make me not so concerned about being fat anymore, and I proceeded to wish on every set of birthday candles from age eight until I stopped making wishes that I could just get thin, stay thin, and have a normal jawline. (Hmmmmm…I think I found the issue. That’s three separate wishes.)

Let’s fast forward a bit to puberty. I was relatively flat chested until I was 13 and suddenly I grew triple D breasts in the span of three months.

Now, to a girl who has small breasts that might sound like a dream come true. However, enormous breasts contain the not-a-dream-come-true side effects of: neck pain, back pain, never finding a bra that actually fits (especially in the ‘80s), never finding a swimsuit that fits, getting picked on relentlessly, and occasional comments like, “Oh wow — I didn’t know you had big tits, I thought you were just fat,” when I’d occasionally wear something that wasn’t baggy and potato sack-esque.

But I’ll get back to that another time. Right now, we’re talking about the chin of my youth.

Right around the time I started developing a woman’s body was when I started really digging into how hideous I felt. My weight fluctuated wildly (thanks to food policing, body shaming, and chocolate being the only thing in existence that didn’t actively make me feel bad about myself on a regular basis) despite the fact that I’d been dieting since age seven.

Yes, you read that correctly. By the time I was entering second grade I’d already been put on a diet, and by third grade I was going to group exercise classes with my mom and 12 year old sister (she was the pretty one).

This isn’t a bash-my-mom-fest, though. All she knew was that I was unhappy with how I looked, so she found the very best solution available to an ‘80s mom and restricted my calories. The details are fuzzy; what I remember vividly though is sneaking sweets as often as I could, and how ashamed I felt the one time I got caught. (Deeper self-loathing level unlocked.)

And oh my God, how jealous was I of girls whose chins didn’t slope down into their necks? Some even had it slope upward! That’s the model look right there, and that’s what I wanted desperately.

Being disgusted by my appearance had lots of reaffirmation in popular culture in those days, since the body shaming movement that began in the early 1960s with some skinny model chick nicknamed “Twiggy” really started sharpening its teeth in the 1980s.

Just watch any ‘80s movie, music video, or TV show and you’ll see what I mean…look for the blonde in the bikini for the set expectations. Heather Thomas, Heather Locklear — any Heather really — tiny everywhere except the boobs and the hair, both of which had to be as big as possible.

But back to the matter at hand. I hated my jawline with a fire like nothing else, and like many other unacknowledged biological crimes against women, I couldn’t grow a beard to hide it. So I just lived with it and adamantly avoided anything that would show me in profile.

The chin that inspired a million tears is gone, and in its place is that sexy chin-sling I always wanted.

The opportunity to do something about it eluded me until my mid-forties, at which point my husband and I made that decent investment move which drummed up some extra cash, and I finally gave myself the gift that I’d been wanting for as long as I can remember — I went to get a consultation for facial liposuction.

You’d think that I did loads of research, but the Universe stepped in at a dermatologist’s office in my town. I had made an appointment to get a mole checked, and while I was waiting to see the dermatologist I noticed the video playing in the waiting room was of before/after patient photos. Something about it caught my eye. (Both eyes, actually, since I have two.)

“The doctor told me that he had removed more fat cells from my chin than about 98% of his patients before me.

I saw a before/after side-by-side of an older woman who started with a pronounced receding chin and ended with a much nicer jawline. The best part is that it looked so natural — you’d never look at that woman and think, “Who botched that facelift?”

That’s really what had kept me from having it done sooner, truth be known. It was less about the cost and way more about “but what if it looks worse afterwards?” (My own before and after jawline images are below.)

I asked the receptionist if this office did procedures like the one I wanted, she said yes, and handed me a business card for Dr. Park…who just happens to be one of the most sought after plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills.