① The number of facelifts performed in the United States increased an impressive 17% since the start of the pandemic. Google searches for “facelift” doubled over the same time period. “Plastic surgery patients are now 10 years younger as compared to pre-pandemic,” New York-based plastic surgeon Dr Robert Schwarcz revealed in a press release, “and are coming in their mid-30s instead of mid-40s.”
② Contrary to the beauty industry’s favorite marketing line – “do it for you!” – no desire springs authentic and unbidden from the depths of one’s innermost soul. Rather, as philosopher René Girard argued in his 1961 theory of “mimetic desire”, all human desire is derivative. We want the things we want, in other words – the Labubu, the barrel jeans, the de-aged face – because other people want them.
③ When it comes to beauty specifically, what we want to look like changes as technology changes what it’s possible to look like. New facelift innovations – less invasive techniques, more “natural” results, subtler scars, faster recovery times, Buy Now Pay Later – lower the barrier to entry. Access is democratized; demand skyrockets.
④ The “cosmetic transparency” movement also plays a part here. Celebrities who openly share the procedures they’ve had destigmatize cosmetic work and provide people with the blueprints to A-list beauty. In a media announcement, New York-based plastic surgeon Dr Ari Hoschander said he believes “this growing openness toward plastic surgery ... is one of the reasons why younger patients are seeking these procedures”.
⑤ Despite these pressures, the best reason not to get a facelift remains a simple one: you don’t want one—external influences shouldn’t override your own judgment. But for those still weighing the decision, other compelling reasons to opt out exist.
⑥ Besides an aesthetically “botched” outcome, complications from facelift surgery can include hematoma, infection, nerve damage, hair loss, scarring, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and, in exceedingly rare cases, death. What’s more, “adverse psychological reactions to facelift operations are shown to occur in about 50% of patients, with depression and anxiety being the most common,” according to a 2022 paper in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal.
⑦ The procedure can cost anywhere from $8,500 to $200,000. That’s enough for a potential down payment on a home, a car, a vacation, years of psychoanalysis or a sizable donation to the National Center to Reframe Aging.
⑧ Moreover, facelifts also perpetuate ageist, classist, all-around-oppressive beauty norms. And since “individual acts of conformity can strengthen these norms”, in the words of philosopher Dr Clare Chambers, “individual acts of resistance really can matter”.
⑨ Ultimately, between the pull of mimetic desire and the push of real risks, the choice to resist conformity is a powerful act.
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