From society’s patriarchal preoccupation with “virginal youth” to subconscious biological markers that make youthfulness more attractive to us as humans, for women, beauty and youth have always gone hand in hand — meaning the younger you look, the more beautiful you are. In a world that places utmost emphasis on superficial appearance above all else, that toxic relationship has left many of us chasing eternal youth through beauty products and anti-aging treatments that can turn back the clock. (The global anti-aging cosmetics market was estimated at $60B in 2021 and is expected to reach $120B by 2030.)
Beyond cosmetics, surgical anti-aging procedures have also soared in popularity, with facelifts clocking in as the second most popular procedure performed by surgeons in the US in 2022 — coming in second only to liposuction — with over 200,000 face lifts routinely performed each year. Typically requested by older women in their fifties and sixties, a facelift is a common cosmetic surgery that pulls back and tightens sagging skin on the cheeks and jawline to create “a younger look” and shape.
But similarly to how non-invasive procedures like Botox, chemical peels, and filler have contributed heavily to the ubiquity of pronounced plastic surgery procedures in the 2010s, new techniques have catapulted facelifts into one of the top plastic surgery trends of 2024. (According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, there was already an 8% increase in facelifts performed in 2022.) And as plastic surgery grows to be more accessible, the age women are starting to consider the procedure is becoming younger and younger.
“It used to be clients in their fifties and beyond enquiring about facelifts and when the ideal age is, now I have patients — mostly women in their late thirties and early forties — considering facelifts to decrease their need for non-surgical treatments now and later in life,” shares Molly Bailey, a licensed aesthetic provider.
Dr. Daniel Barrett, a popular board-certified plastic surgeon based in Beverly Hills, has also noticed the trend first-hand: “I had someone in her twenties come ask me about a facelift — I told her that she wasn’t a good candidate, and she wasn’t happy about it.”
For me, plastic surgery used to seem like something dramatic and unthinkable: After all, how could I so casually alter my face; the pinnacle of my identity and self-understanding? But as scores of friends and peers start getting “preventative” botox and fillers, and as I spend more and more time seeing myself age both online and in real life, I’m beginning to understand the draw.
“Social media has created a greater access to information that’s normalised cosmetic treatments and lessened the stigma of plastic surgery and cosmetic enhancement,” Bailey shares. “Young people can now see first-hand accounts of treatments and healing which remove some of the anxiety associated with plastic surgery. I think younger generations are more open and interested in slowing down the ageing process and looking their best without concern of what others will think.”
New procedures like a “mini facelift,” which allow patients to bypass the usual two-week downtime associated with a deep plane facelift and facial fat grafting, have also made facelifts more appealing to patients. “In a mini facelift, you basically take some of the skin and do a SMAS plication (lifting and re-anchoring the superficial musculoaponeurotic system tissue layer). Deep plane facelift is my preferred technique, where we get the corner of the jowls and retaining ligaments of the cheekbones and bring everything back up,” Dr. Barrett explains.
The increased interest in facelifts at this particular moment in time — especially in a younger demographic — can be attributed to a variety of factors. Heavy Ozempic use for weight loss over the last couple of years, for example, has created a phenomenon colloquially known as “Ozempic face,” which speaks to the sagging and ageing of facial skin due to sudden weight loss. As referenced by both Bailey and Barrett, social media continues to be an irrefutable force in accelerating interest in anti-aging treatments, both when it comes to the continual judgement of one’s own appearance and using it as a form of research.
But what I personally find the most ironic about this spike in facelifts is that fat in the face is actually vital for a youthful appearance, something many people noted during the buccal fat removal trend and Bailey herself pointed out in her viral TikTok on the rise in “quiet facelifts.” As more and more of us give in to the very real pressure of altering our appearance to better fit societal norms, I worry that younger people are making decisions that will benefit them in the short-term — without really thinking through how this kind of procedure may actually age them in the long run.
These days, as I near the final era of my Saturn return, I can honestly say that I have not felt the most beautiful I have ever been: I feel old and tired, weighed down with responsibility and adulthood, and I too have been wanting to turn back the clock. And while it’s wonderful that plastic surgery and technology has gotten to the point where we can entertain it, I can’t help but wonder: what would our world look like if we allowed women to be considered beautiful not despite their age, but because of it?
What if, in that world, the wisdom and grace of our lived experiences were seen as the markers of beauty, instead of the lack of it?
I can’t help but think that’s the kind of world I’d like to live in.