Face Lift? Why Not?

By Karen and Erica

A recent article in the FT asked: Would you pay $200,000 to look half your age? (Paywall.) For us the answer is a clear no, for all kinds of reasons. But we have no normative views about facelifts.

What is a facelift? The Cleveland Clinic describes it in detail:

A facelift (also known as a rhytidectomy) is a general term for any surgical procedure that improves signs of aging in your face and/or neck by repositioning or removing skin, fat and/or muscle. Signs of aging that a facelift can restore include:

• • Relaxed, sagging skin on your face.
  • Deep fold or crease lines between your nose and the corners of your mouth.
  • Facial fat that has fallen or is lacking.
  • Drooping skin on your cheeks and/or jaw (known as jowls).
  • Loose skin and extra fat in your neck that looks like a “double chin.”

Facelifts are considered cosmetic restorative surgeries and cannot fundamentally change your appearance or stop the aging process. They also can’t treat superficial wrinkles, sun damage or irregularities in your skin color. Facelifts are very individualized surgeries that are unique to each person’s face and their result goals.

We are completely agnostic when it comes to alterations. Techniques have advanced. It is apparently easier and easier to change your appearance, in major or minor respects. If you feel your appearance is wanting, or a change might better reflect your inner self, and you can afford it, why not? 

For us, a facelift is a no. We are OK looking our age–just as well, because we may be aging out for facelifts! We absolutely try to make ourselves look good. We use whatever techniques we can muster to look our age. We try to improve our appearance with moisturizers, makeup, hair color, and fun attire. Getting a facelift seems to us just a little further along the spectrum. We just don’t personally feel the need to go there–though some of the comments on social media suggest we should!

And what fun that men see the logic as well. The FT article featured pictures of Marc Jacobs, as well as Kris Jenner, among others. Men are now more open about this type of renovation. About time they realized we appreciate their efforts to look good, too. 

The only thing that surprised us about the FT article was the entirely twenty-first century reason some people are getting facelifts. While Jacobs and Jenner might have wanted a more youthful appearance, apparently some younger people want to achieve a physical look that matches how they look on social media, where they have already made themselves look exactly as they wish. Wow. But again, why not?

We are on record, of course, as having the view that society places too much emphasis on youth when it comes to women. Young women are fabulous. Many of us were young women once. Those were heady days. We loved them. We too have struggled in some respects as the years have piled on, as our faces have changed, as our body parts have failed to keep up with our mental image of ourselves, and as gravity’s inexorable pull has seemingly increased its force. But we do not plan to give in. We work hard to stay healthy and fit, to apply our minimal makeup skills, and to dress in ways that please us and announce to the world that we are still here and still to be reckoned with. Are face lifts so different?

Nevertheless, no face lifts for us for the moment. We value how our faces manifest our experience. Maybe some day people will want reverse face lifts? So they can look smarter? Hmmm. Maybe not!

Early on, one of our friends gave us a day-by-day description of the face lift process, and we found it fascinating, She made slight changes, but they were very effective, and she still looks amazing. So please let us know if you take this route–we’d love to hear why you did it, and how it went.