双语阅读：永远微笑的嘴角

摘要： 韩国女人一直对各种高风险的整容手术趋之若鹜，只为让自己拥有一张如西方人般立体的面容。近几个月来，一种被称为“Smile Lipt”的嘴角整容手术在韩国非常风靡。该手术将嘴角切开再缝合，重新调整上下颚的角度，使得嘴部的线条更柔和。

The rise of the creepy perma-smile

Women in South Korea are resorting to dangerous and painful surgery in their quest for a more western face.

Demand for double jaw surgery, a bone-cutting procedure that involves realigning the upper and lower jaws to achieve a softer silhouette, has soared in the last few months

And now a photograph has appeared on a social networking site seeming to show a woman who has undergone surgery to lift the corners of her mouth into a permanent smile.

Although the photograph, which appeared on Reddit, hasn't yet been authenticated the Huffington Post reports that there is a clinic in South Korea offering this procedure.

The AONE clinic performs the ‘Smile Lipt’ procedure to both lift and curl drooping mouth corners by manipulating the facial muscles supporting the mouth.

A Youtube video produced by the clinic about the procedure explains that some people have sagging mouth corners due to low strength of the muscles that lift the mouth edges, and overly strong jaw muscles that pull the mouth down.

The video says that ‘even among ordinary people, some have beautifully upturned mouth corners,’ and that ‘in general Western people have longer mouths and higher mouth corners than Korean people.’

Once the procedure has been performed the mouth will always been turned up, even when the patient is not smiling.

The Business Insider reports that plastic surgeon at the AONE clinic, Taek Keun Kwon spoke in 2012 about developing the procedure saying:

‘Up until now, mouth corner lift couldn't be widely used due to its ineffectiveness and high risk of side effects such as scars.

‘Downturned mouth corners give off gloomy and melancholy impression.

'On the contrary, upturned mouth corners create bright and smiling appearance as well as confident expression.

‘It is very difficult to elevate mouth corner by just excision and closure of the skin around the mouth corner area. To turn up the mouth corner effectively, it is necessary to weaken the lip depressors to gain unopposed mouth corner lift.’

It appears that there is a growing number of people willing to risk the side effects of such a procedure which include scarring and ‘over correction’ to achieve a ‘upturned’ look.

South Korea has one of the highest rates of plastic surgery in the world so it is little wonder that such a niche procedure has its origins in the country.

It remains to be seen whether the slightly cat-like look will become popular, but thus far the reaction to the photo on Reddit has been more comical than admiring with two top rated user comments being ‘joker’ and ‘Imagine trying to eat noodles or soup with this!'