{"id":26913,"date":"2025-03-18T21:38:41","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T21:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=26913"},"modified":"2026-03-13T16:30:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T16:30:41","slug":"about-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2025\/03\/about-face\/","title":{"rendered":"About Face"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Robyn Ross \/ Photo by Danielle Villasana<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the moment she arrived for a consultation with Dr. Regina Rodman \u201901, Emily* was a delightful, upbeat patient. She happily posted \u201cbefore\u201d photos to social media in anticipation of her facial feminization surgery; once she recovered, she added glamorous, beaming post-surgery selfies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Months later, Rodman discovered a testimonial the trans woman had posted to an online forum. Emily wrote that, before surgery, she had decided that life in the male body she was born into had become unbearable. She had planned to end it\u2014but, as her last hope, she would try facial feminization surgery. The procedures, Emily wrote, had been miraculous; she felt like she finally could embrace life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rodman was startled to learn the stakes had been so high, but she was glad to have contributed to Emily\u2019s newfound happiness. Now, when Emily looks in the mirror, \u201cHer reflection matches the person she knows inside,\u201d Rodman says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rodman specializes in gender-affirming facial plastic surgery. Her Houston-based practice helps patients align their physical appearance with their gender identity by changing not just the skin but the bones of the face, creating an entirely new appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although she had always wanted to be a doctor, Rodman majored in anthropology at Macalester, focusing her studies on medicine with help from DeWitt Wallace Professor Emeritus Jack Weatherford, Professor Emeritus David McCurdy, and Professor Dianna Shandy. She learned ethnographic interviewing techniques she uses today in her consultations, ninety-minute conversations that always begin with the open-ended prompt, \u201cTell me about yourself.\u201d It\u2019s instructive to notice what patients mention first, she says: their job, their family, what they don\u2019t like about their face. \u201cI learn a lot about their values and how they see themselves by the way they answer the question.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rodman began her pre-medicine requirements at Macalester, then later completed them through a postbaccalaureate program at Loyola University. While applying to medical school, she worked for the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, where some of the doctors talked with her about their reconstructive cases: rebuilding people\u2019s jaws and chins after cancer, military injuries, and other traumas. Before seeing case photos, she hadn\u2019t understood how radically surgeons could transform faces\u2014but now she was hooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She earned her medical degree at Chicago\u2019s Rush University and matched with a Houston otolaryngology (ear, nose, and throat) residency, where she learned facial reconstructive techniques. She then completed a facial plastic surgery fellowship that focused on craniofacial surgery, procedures that correct birth defects or reconstruct the bones of the skull, face, and jaw. Rodman discovered she was suited for the long surgeries such cases entailed. \u201cI can spend twelve, fourteen hours in surgery like no time has passed,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s my superpower.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After her fellowship she returned to Houston, a city she\u2019d grown to love during her residency. In 2016 she launched her private practice focused on facial skeletal surgery. The following year, she received an email asking if she worked with transgender women. The woman wanted V-line surgery, a procedure popular in South Korea that narrows the jaw and chin for a more feminine look. The patient was delighted with her results and spread the word online. Soon, more of Rodman\u2019s practice was facial feminization surgery, a natural extension of what she\u2019d learned in fellowship training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For patients who want to look more feminine, Rodman performs a browbone reduction, in which she lightens the forehead by removing, reconstructing, and replacing the bone between the eyebrows. She reduces the prominence of the orbital rims, the bones under the outside of the patient\u2019s eyebrows. She does a V-line to slim the chin and jaw, a rhinoplasty to create a more delicate nose, and an Adam\u2019s apple reduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy happiest moment is when people say that they can\u2019t unlock their phone with their face, because the structure of their skeleton has changed,\u201d she says. Patients also will get soft-tissue procedures: a lip lift, hairline lowering, browlift and cheek augmentation. It\u2019s a full face transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But some lawmakers have targeted gender-affirming procedures. Two years ago, the Texas legislature considered a bill that would hold insurers and doctors who provide \u201cgender modification procedures or treatments\u201d financially liable for medical or mental health complications for the rest of the patient\u2019s life, even if the physician wasn\u2019t at fault. The bill would effectively end the treatments in Texas, because providers would be unable to obtain malpractice insurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill applied to genital surgeries as well as \u201cthe removal of any otherwise healthy or non diseased body part\u201d if the procedure was undertaken to transition a patient\u2019s gender from their sex assigned at birth or affirm their perception of their sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill didn\u2019t explicitly mention facial surgery, but these days, about half of Rodman\u2019s patients are transitioning to another gender. The other half, though, are cisgender women who want browbone reductions, chin reductions, or hairline advancements\u2014procedures that help them look more feminine by societal standards. If the bill became law, would Rodman be responsible for determining whether a patient\u2019s intent was to affirm her gender identity or just look prettier? \u201cWho decides where those lines are drawn?\u201d she muses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2023 bill died in committee, but Rodman worries that, emboldened by a second Trump presidency, Texas lawmakers will resurrect it this spring. Until political leaders force her to make changes or fight back in court, she\u2019ll continue performing the surgeries that patients like Emily have credited with saving their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s that type of response that makes me keep doing this,\u201d Rodman says. \u201cEmily sees her face the way she feels\u2014as a woman\u2014and she thinks now she can live and move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*a pseudonym<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robyn Ross is a writer in Austin, Texas.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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