Avoiding the Spock Look

We here this all the time from new Botox and Dysport patients coming to our San Diego office. ‘I don’t want Spock eyebrows’ they say. Well, no reputable cosmetic doctor wants to create the Spock eyebrow look. But, unfortunately, it can and does still occur when Botox and Dysport is injected by doctors and nurses who don’t have a lot of knowledge and experience with forehead muscles and facial movement.

The Spock eyebrow is an overly arched eyebrow that shows its peak out to the side of the forehead. The reason this occurs is because your doctor injected the central part of the mid to upper forehead – without injecting any Botox and Dysport along the sides of the forehead.

To really understand why Botox injections can do this, we recommend you first read our blog entry regarding Botox and forehead movement.

The adjacent Botox diagram shows the Spock issue more visually. The green area represents where Botox or Dysport is injected in the brow elevators. That means this area of the forehead will be paralyzed and stop moving. But the sides of the forehead still have muscle movement since Botox or Dysport was not injected in these areas. And those muscles along the side of the forehead work to pull the eyebrow upwards as is shown by the arrows. The end result cosmetically is that the eyebrow arches unnaturally out to the side – much like Spock’s eyebrow.

So how do you avoid this Spock look from Botox and Dysport? Your doctor should also inject these red zones with a small amount of Botox or Dysport so this area of the forehead muscle stops moving enough to provide a more natural looking, softly arched eyebrow.