Aesthetic cosmetic surgery is often about maintenance, staying fresh and young looking with regular procedures. However, a face-lift is more about turning the clock back. Generally, sudden age changes, illness or weight loss can make us aware that we no longer look our best. Expressions such as “I am beginning to look like my mother” are common. You may feel you always look angry or tired or that your partner and you have a visual age disparity when other people see you together at social events. Or you may have the ‘Mommy-at-the-school-gates Syndrome’ when you are an older mother and have to wait there with all the other mothers who are 10-15 years younger. Alternatively, you may have lost a loved one or divorced and be wanting to start a new life. Special events such as a child’s wedding, a graduation and changing jobs in mid-life, can also precipitate a decision to have a facelift. Sometimes grandchildren will play with the waddle in your neck! These days, Selfies, Videoconferencing and Facetiming make us even more self-aware. Even after the Pandemic, it is likely that these forms of communication will continue to be more the norm than the exception.
Waiting for face-lifting surgery until you are 65 and then going in for the “works”, expecting to come out looking natural, is unrealistic. More natural results are achievable at a younger age such as between 45-55. But if you already had a facelift at 45 or 50, then you should look natural after a second facelift at 65. Those who ignore this advice and have their first facelift in their sixties may need a secondary facelift within a few years of the first surgery because of the poor elasticity of their skin. Since I have had a facelift, I can understand the decision-making process. It is hard to accept that you have finally reached the age when a bit of non-invasive skin-tightening and a syringe of Botox or filler will no longer take care of the problem. In fact, one way to decide if you are ready for a facelift is when these relatively simple non-invasive procedures fail to give you a result that you are happy with. Another decision pint is when the cost of your regular injectable and other treatments exceeds the cost of a facelift.
A facelift, fat injections and the other procedures mentioned above can reduce the need for non-invasive treatments which have to be repeated every three to six months.