That couldn’t be further from the image 45-year-old Elyassnia has painted in social media posts, comments to glamour magazines, and an interview published in the San Francisco edition of lifestyle magazine Haute Living. Born to a family of Assyrian and Armenian ancestry, Elyassnia and his family immigrated to the United States during the Revolution. He grew up in California and attended University of Southern California Medical School, where he specialized in cosmetic surgery. According to the Haute Living article, Elyassnia initially considered becoming a heart surgeon, inspired by two uncles who were surgeons, but later “found that he had an artistic side that would not be fully utilized as a vascular surgeon.”
