With her smooth forehead, new hair, clear skin, and luscious mouth Joan was making many new friends, but gravity was not one of them. Her face was dropping faster than the value of the dollar (even in Canada). Joan knew in her heart that a complete face lift was the answer, but fear drove her to find an alternate solution. She saw an ad by the Air Force seeking volunteers to test the effects of G-forces on the human body, and so she devised a plan. Joan knew that the more acceleration she could tolerate inside the centrifuge chamber, the longer her face would remain pulled back and frozen in place. The stakes were high, but she was prepared to go the distance. A gorgeous tight face would attract suitors, and Joan knew suitors would bring with them orgasms and gifts, both things she enjoyed and looked forward to receiving from someone other than herself. Joan figured she could endure a little G-force for as long as needed if that meant it eventually led to the G-spot! Unfortunately, the centrifuge conked out just as Joan broke the all-time G-force endurance-test record. She spent the next hour bent over the toilet from motion sickness, which only increased the pull of gravity on her face. Disoriented, she stumbled off the base and managed to dial a plastic surgeon and set up a consultation.
The face lift: It’s the biggie—the lift procedure that pops into everyone’s head when they hear the phrase “plastic surgery.” It’s the anchor—all other procedures are built around it.
According to a recent government study (yes, another waste of taxpayer money), the average man looks first at a woman’s breasts, then her butt, then the legs, then the crotch. After all that, if he’s not drunk, he will lift his gaze to a woman’s face.
He might then recoil in shock and horror, no matter how tight your body, if you are a jowly hag with three chins and chipmunk cheeks.
Once a woman hits fifty, the face and neck muscles and the skin lose their strength and stretchiness. The below-the-neck muscles and skin suffer, too, with age, but at least you can hit the gym to tone your body. You can’t lift weights with your cheeks. Blame gravity, sun damage, smoking. They conspire against you, causing droopage.
Droopage is not a medical diagnosis. It’s a natural disaster!
You can either live with a road map for a face, or you can join the ranks of the 118,414 women who had what I like to consider “facial feng shui” in 2007, making it the sixth most popular cosmetic plastic surgery of the year.
Professionals call it rhytidectomy. I call it “Dear Old Friend.”
I’ve had my face overhauled—chin to forehead, ear to ear—twice. The first time was in 1975. I mentioned this story in the book’s introduction, about coming out of the operating room wrapped up like a mummy and seeing two women I knew with the same exact bandaging as I had. And each had the gall to say she was in a car accident! Plastic surgery was a shameful secret then.
Times have changed, and people are more open about it. Gene Simmons of the rock band KISS and his girlfriend, Shannon Tweed, got his-and-her face lifts, had them filmed, and showed the footage on his TV reality show. These days, if you say you’re going in for a lift, your friends won’t scorn you. They’ll form a line to see the new you.
My first face lift was truly a major turning point in my looks and life. I’d made the decision to do it because I was sick of seeing myself looking tired and drawn. I was on camera constantly having my picture taken, and there it was, the starting of an uneven chin line, beginning rings around my neck, just looking, as my mother would say, “not fresh.” I couldn’t delude myself into thinking I looked fine—and don’t think I didn’t try! I’d pretend that nothing had changed, or that the problems were noticeable only to me. But then I’d see a publicity photo, or watch a tape of a TV appearance, and I’d cringe.
Not only could I see my turkey neck, but so could millions of viewers. Pilgrims started inviting me to Thanksgiving dinner. One fan sent me a side of cranberry sauce. It was depressing. Then I realized that, although I couldn’t fix contract negotiations or change monologues already taped, my neck was one problem I could easily fix.
My recovery was relatively painless, or as close to painless as any operation could be. The only thing that bothered me were the bandages, which, in those days, were wrapped tightly around the face and neck. Every day, I looked a little bit better. It was like moving backwards in time. You know how it feels to grow younger? To see the sign of it in the mirror? It’s terrific! Not just aesthetically, but emotionally as well. I couldn’t wait to take my new face for a walk. One week after the surgery, I put on some foundation to cover the bruises and reintroduced myself to the world—with sunglasses and an Hermès scarf around my neck.
For all I knew, no one saw the difference. But I saw it, and, more importantly, I felt the change. When I turned to the side, I knew that my jawline was sharp and neat. What felt so good was to have all that annoyance and anxiety gone. All the worry and stress were over, done for, and the sudden absence of anxiety created a vacuum in my mind, into which rushed a new attitude and a positive energy.
That’s when I realized what plastic surgery is really for: not for tightening, not for changing outward appearance—those are extra bonuses. Plastic surgery is for making you feel better about yourself. My confidence doubled. I always put on a good act, but we are slaves to our insecurities. In my line of work, I needed confidence to keep going, to continue putting myself out there. The face lift gave me a great boost.
Remember: Your face represents you. To help keep your career going or your love life kicking, you can take care of the one thing your boss, client, husband, lover, the check-out clerk, everyone, must see when he/she/it talks to you: your face, your advertisement for yourself. Your face is how you present whatever it is you’re selling. If you’re interested in making a change—in your career or love life— you can start by rejuvenating your face. Body flaws can be hidden, but you can’t hide your face behind a veil all the time.
Unless, of course, you live in Saudi Arabia.
I’m not sure if it helps to know this, but droopage happens to everyone. Even Dakota Fanning, eventually, will see her face fall. It’s unavoidable. As each day passes, the elastin and collagen in your skin are a bit more slack. Facial muscles grow lax. The fat deposits in your cheeks (the one place you actually want to be chubby) begin to sink. The effects are only too predictable. They are:
Turkey necks: the wattle of flesh under your chin that swings gently in the breeze or whenever you move your head.
Jowls: these pockets of hanging skin along the jowl line that make you look like a basset hound.
Nasolabial folds: the deep lines that run from the corner of your nose in a vertical line down to your lip, à la Fred Flintstone.
Marionette lines: the vertical lines that run from the corners of your mouth, down to your chin.
Tear troughs: the deep, hollow pockets that form under eyes. The only good thing about them is you can fill them with actual tears.
Rhytids: the Greek word for “wrinkles.” In American we call them “Faye Dunaways.”
Each of the above conditions is the unhappy result of fat deposits in your cheeks surrendering to gravity and skin losing springiness. A lifetime of emoting turns expression lines into permanent grooves.
Okay, here we go. The standard face lift, the classic, the tried-and-true, the Tiffany, the Steinway, hoists the skin and facial tissue from ear to ear, cheek to chin. It also deals with the all-important jaw-line and neck. God bless it, and long may it wave …instead of your jowls and neck waving.
The standard face lift was first attempted in 1901—and, no, not on me—and it’s been tweaked, retooled, and improved fifty thousand times since. Initially, the aim was just to tighten the skin, like pulling the sheets up over a messy bed. The big flaw with this approach was that yanking back the bed sheets is all well and good, but it didn’t fix the saggy mattress underneath.
The acronym SMAS might as well stand for Saggy Mattress and Skin. Actually, it’s short for Superficial Muscular Aponeurotic System, or the network of facial muscles and tissue. There are ninety-eight muscles in the face, and we use all of them: when we frown over the VISA bill, when we laugh when we see a gorgeous model trip on the runway, and when we experience every emotion in between. In a standard face-lift procedure, the surgeon is going to raise your SMAS. If he doesn’t lift the underlying muscles and tissues of the face, you won’t get the results you want.
I never want to know the details of surgeries I’m having. I just tell my doctor what I want and schedule the procedure. On the other hand, I have a very close friend who wants to know everything that is being done to her. So, if you’re like me, skip ahead two pages for the results. If you’re like my friend, read on, as I run down what will happen to a face on the day of a typical lift:
1. Cut. Can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs; can’t lift a face without making incisions. After knocking you out (definitely you want general anesthesia) and cleaning the area, your surgeon will make a part in your hair an inch or so back from your natural hairline. He’ll draw a dotted line from your temple region down to the front of your ear, curving down to the bottom of the ear, then behind it, and along the hairline for a few more inches as a guideline. Then he’ll make the cut using a scalpel. Still with me?
2. Peel. Think of your face as an orange, with the skin as the peel and the muscle/fat/fascia as the pulp. To get to the pulp, you have to separate it from the peel. Your surgeon will detach or “elevate” the skin from your face—starting from the temple, rolling forward in front of the ear, moving down to the hairline behind your ear—using scissors, forceps, whatever tool he needs to. The skin will be pulled forward over the nose, held there with a retractor, to expose the SMAS of your jaw and cheeks. It gets worse.
3. Hoist. Depending on your needs, your doctor might trim or remove some of the underlying tissue. Most likely, he’ll lift the SMAS—the muscles and connective tissue of the face—using a needle and surgical thread. With a few strategic gathering stitches—like ruching the bodice of a gown—he’ll sew your SMAS tighter and higher. Thank God for anesthesia!
4. Trim. Next, the doctor will pull the skin back over your face, pulling it nice and smooth. Once he likes the reposition of the skin, the doctor will make several holding stitches—at the temples, near the ears, by the hairline behind the ear. It’s like using pins to make a hem before you sew it. Once he’s sure of the degree of tension—if the skin is too tight, you’ll look like you’ve been trapped in a wind tunnel—he’ll cut away the excess skin and sew up the incision. It’s not over yet.
5. Repeat. He’ll then do the same thing to the other side of your face. Now comes the good part.
6. Neck Next. To get at the turkey neck, your doctor will make a two-inch cut under your chin that will expose the neck muscles: the platysma package. Holding the skin open with the retractor, the doctor will then sew the platysma muscles snug. He might remove some of the muscles or lipo some fat while he’s in there, using a syringe or a micro-cannula. Then he’ll sew the incision closed. Done.*
7. Drain. Your doctor might put a drain in for fluid buildup. If he does, it’ll come out in a day or so (at which point you can take a shower). He’ll also put your SMAS in a sort of sling, like a girdle for your head, designed to give you support and cut down on swelling. That wasn’t so bad, was it?
8. Wake Up in the recovery room, awash with relief and contentment, knowing it’s over and that you’ve done the right thing for yourself. The whole operation should last about three hours, depending on whether you had additional procedures along with the lift.
Often, women have crow’s feet wrinkles filled with Restylane while they’re already under. Or they’ll have a skin peel.
I personally think that while you’re under general anesthesia, you should do any little extra tweak that you can.
Can you put a price on feeling confident? Is there a dollar equivalent to self-assurance? You bet your SMAS there is. For a standard face lift, the range is $7,000 to $15,000. It might seem like a lot, but that total includes fees for the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the nurses, the facility, the drugs, the implants, the follow-up care.
Often, people combine a face/neck lift with a brow lift, eye job, laser or Thermage skin resurfacing, Restylane or Juvéderm fillers. (See Chapter 4 for info about those procedures.) If you get the full overhaul, three or more procedures, you’ll be under for up to six hours and can expect to pay …well, it depends on the doctor! A friend of mine wanted a complete facial rejuvenation plus a nose job. One semi-top doctor gave her a quote of $100,000, which seems insane, even by Los Angeles standards, where another star surgeon quoted $40,000.
For face work, it’s imperative that you consult with at least three doctors.
Study their before-and-after photos closely. Be pinpoint specific about the changes you want and then get their prices. But please, don’t choose the doctor with the cheapest fee! This isn’t like going to a restaurant and ordering the second-to-least expensive entree on the menu. Pick the surgeon you like, then question—nicely—the prices. Most surgeons are fair, and you’ll find, in most cases, you’ll be paying him what he deserves.
If you can’t afford to pay for the qualified doctor of your choice, then hold off on the face lift for now and start saving. Put off your vacation this year. Drive around in the clunker for a while longer.
As I always say, better a new face coming out of an old car than an old face coming out of a new one.
The rewards:
You’ll have a feeling of rebirth, of second chances and new beginnings.
You’ll like what you see in the mirror.
Have I not used the phrase “You will look ten years younger”
enough?
A few weeks off. You have a mini-vacation from work while you recover for one to three weeks. And you can’t exercise for a month. Doctor’s orders!
Once it’s over, there is no downside! Only upside! In today’s appearance-centric, professional environment, it’s far better to look forty and be fifty than look fifty and be forty. Let the slack-jawed among your colleagues opt for early retirement.
The risks:
Death. Any time you’re put to sleep and operated on, there’s the tiny risk of dying on the table. The stats on death by anesthesia complications are one in 250,000. The best way to avoid dying is to tell your doctor everything about your family history, drug use, diabetes, allergies, blood pressure. Submit to a lengthy examination of your whole body to be deemed fit for surgery. Have yourself tested for unknown allergies to latex and medications the doctor will be using. Make sure the facility is equipped with all the necessary life-saving apparatus.
Disfigurement. A harsh word. Makes me think of the Elephant Man or Quasimodo. There is always the possibility that, after the operation, the two sides of your face don’t match up. Your right cheek may be higher; your jaw may be looser on the left. As Dr. Steve Hoefflin, one of the great plastic surgeons, once said, “Even a Thoroughbred racehorse can stumble.” Usually, once the swelling recedes, you won’t notice the oddness. But a chance of winding up two-faced is real, and not to be taken lightly.*
If you had an implant put in as part of your lift, the implant might slip or move. If so, it’ll have to be fixed with a second operation.
Nerve damage. I joke about it on my Geico commercial, but numbness or paralysis is a possible outcome of any face work. Nerve damage is caused by a scalpel nicking or bruising a facial nerve. It seems miraculous that more surgeons don’t damage them, considering how many nerves are in the face. But an experienced doctor rarely makes this mistake. Rest assured, permanent numbness or paralysis is extremely rare.† Usually, if you do have some numbness or face freeze, the nerve was only bruised, not destroyed. You’ll regain sensation and mobility after a few weeks or months.
If you’re anxious about this, talk to your doctor!
You’re paying your doctor not only for surgery; you’re also paying him to talk to you beforehand.
After death, disfigurement, and paralysis, what’s a little swelling? Okay, yes, those first few days, you’ll look like a pregnant chipmunk. But the swelling will go down a little every day. Eighty percent will be gone in a month. By six months, you’ll be completely deflated.
Bruising. Okay, the first week or two, you’ll look like Naomi Campbell’s assistant. But the bruising will fade and will be completely gone by the end of a month. Don’t sit at home, staring in the mirror, watching your bruises fade. Go outside. The fresh air helps, and God gave us makeup for this very reason.
Bleeding. Inside the face. I don’t mean you’ll be gushing blood from your ears or your wounds. Sometimes, a vessel gets nicked or doesn’t heal properly, and a hematoma happens. Usually, it’ll stop on its own, and the bruising, lumps, and swelling are just a temporary pain in the ass (and face). To alleviate the pressure, your doctor can suction off the blood through a syringe. If the bleeder refuses to heal itself, your doctor can go back in and close it up, but that will prolong your recovery period by a few weeks.
Infection. The face has great blood flow, so infections are pretty rare with this operation. BUT—there’s always a “but”—infections are more common if you’ve had implants along with the face lift. If your body wages a war of infection against your implant, your surgeon might even have to declare a surrender and take it out. You can try again several months down the road. Meanwhile, to prevent and fight infection, you’ll be given antibiotics. Remember: God gave us drugs for a reason.
Pain. Don’t forget: Your skin has been cut off your face, separated from the bone, hoisted with a needle and thread, yanked tight, and re-stitched to your scalp. Now, tell me, honestly, do you realistically expect zero pain? Well, guess what? For most people, there is discomfort but not real pain. Your skin feels tight, especially when the swelling is at its peak. But when looking ten years younger is the result, most people are delighted to tolerate the discomfort.
Numbness. Until your face gets over the shock of surgery, you might have spotty numbness for a few weeks. If you still have it after a month, tell your doctor.
Scarring. A skillful surgeon makes tiny stitches, in natural creases, so they won’t be seen once healed. Until then, only your hair stylist will ever see them, and he’ll have to look with a magnifying glass. Makeup—hello!—helps to cover scars until they fade. By your one-year anniversary of the surgery, the scars will be, for all intents and purposes, invisible.
Necrosis. Dead skin or dead fat under your skin. This is the biggest danger for smokers. Smoking messes with your circulation. If you smoke for two weeks before your surgery and two weeks after, the blood flow that promotes healing will be stymied. If healing is stymied, cells can die and a big black splotch of dead skin on your face can appear. Also, if tissue dies under the skin, the skin on top will dimple and dent.
So, hard-core smokers: for motivation not to light up for a month, do a Google image search of “skin necrosis.” Bleccch.
Hair loss. As the incisions are behind the hairline, rarely some of the follicles never bounce back. Also, the hair along your sideburn area, having been cut and stretched, might grow in raggedy. If it does, have the offending parts lasered off permanently. (See Chapter 6 for info about laser hair removal.)
Disappointment. Unless you’re also doing contour work (a nose job, implants) in addition to a lift, the essential you-ness of your face won’t change all that much. For a realistic idea of what to expect, go find a flattering photo of yourself from ten years ago. Looking like that again should be your ideal outcome. If you hope to wake up with Angelina Jolie’s face, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Also, a new look is great to attract men, but don’t expect your pretty face to be a factor when you’re actually doing it, though.
Most men don’t look at the mantel when they’re poking the fire.
Sometimes, a standard face lift is more than a woman needs. There are some intermediate steps that tackle problems in specific parts of the face. For example, a mid-face lift gives a boost to just the cheek areas. A neck lift fixes loose skin in the jowls and neck. Implants strengthen a woman’s profile if she has a weak chin, jawline, or cheekbones.
Here’s the rundown on each.
A mid-face lift, or mini lift, as the name implies, rejuvenates the middle of your face only. Women who don’t have long, ropy strands of suspended platysma muscles in the neck or jiggling jowls along the jawline are ideal candidates for the soft-core version. I think of the mini lift as a starter, like a starter apartment or a starter marriage: the toe-in-water operation for women in their early to mid-forties who are noticing changes in their cheeks and ever deepening nasolabial folds. The mini lift will take care of these pesky problems without much cutting or messing with your SMAS.
The procedure is done under general anesthesia. After you’ve been scrubbed and your hair has been parted, the doctor will make a little incision—a hole, really—behind the hairline of your scalp. Into this hole, he’ll slide a long, thin tube with a light and a camera on the tip—an endoscope—all the way down from your scalp into your mid-face region so he’ll be able to see what he’s doing. Then, he’ll insert another long, thin instrument into that same incision to tunnel around and lift the skin layer away from your cheek bones.
The next step is to pull your upper lip up with a retractor and make an incision in your mouth in the skin over your gums. Only a hole, like the one in your scalp. This second hole is another tunnel entrance. The idea is to have the upper tunnel extend down to meet the lower tunnel.
It’s a meerkat village of tunnels under your face.
Once all the tunnels are connected, the doctor will insert a needle with sutures into the lower (or mouth) incision and sew the fat deposits under your cheeks higher. He’ll use suspension stitches or the ruching technique. All this mending is done under your skin. He can see what he’s doing because the endoscope—still in your face— sends images to a TV monitor, which the doctor watches while he works.
After he’s lifted the fat deposits back in their upright-and-locked position, all the needles, scopes, and forceps are removed from the mouth and scalp holes. The doctor will sew the holes closed.
Then he’ll do the other cheek, and you’re done.
From beginning to end, the mid-face lift takes an hour or two, tops. It costs about $6,000. The recovery is shorter than a standard face lift, although you’ll still have to wear the special mummy head girdle for a week and shouldn’t do any exercise for a month.
In a few weeks, you’ll look in the mirror and see yourself from ten years ago. You’ll fall in love. You’ll want to take yourself out to dinner and a movie. Maybe you’ll get lucky, too!
This procedure is for women who are okay with their faces, but feel like their necks have too much slack or wattle. A neck lift alone can do wonders for your profile, to make everyone you know think you’ve lost ten pounds, just by sharpening the jawline.
The procedure is also under general anesthesia. The first step is to get rid of excess fat by doing liposuction of the area. For a place this small, it’s not a major operation. The doctor will insert a syringe and extract extra fat.
Once your neck is thinned, he’ll go to step two: tightening the platysma muscles, the ropey muscles that hang down and give you that turkey-neck look. To do so, the surgeon will fix the loose muscles with a platysmaplasty: he’ll make small incisions under the chin to access the muscles; he’ll either stitch them tighter with sutures or even use a scalpel to remove some of the muscles, thereby shortening and tightening them.
The third and last step of a neck lift is to sharpen the jawline by removing extra skin. To do a cervicoplasty, the doctor will make incisions under or behind the ears, as well as under the chin if you didn’t have a platysmaplasty; if you did, that incision is already made. He’ll then pull the neck skin tighter—but not too tight!—to get rid of hateful neck rings and any bunches of flesh. Once the skin is repositioned, he’ll trim the excess and suture the incisions closed.
The operation lasts two to four hours and costs between $4,000 and $15,000. The price range is so big because of the multi-step process. Afterward, you’ll wear a compression garment, like a tight turtleneck, for several days. The scars are hidden behind the ear, and unless someone is looking for them, they won’t see them. In a month, you can resume normal exercise and drinking activity.
You can even go back to work in a week, if you feel up to it.
The swelling and bruising are gone by the end of the month, although you’ll see improvement in just a week. At that point, you can start to wear chokers and low-cut dresses, and start to show off the graceful swan neck of your dreams.
Most of us are acquainted with facial implants. Done right, they can improve the proportion and balance of your face. And what a difference they can make! A slightly stronger chin or higher cheekbone can turn a pretty woman into a classic beauty. The material used in facial implants is a silicone rubber. Silicone is the stuff in most breast implants. The implant itself will be custom-sized for your face, wherever it goes, be it the chin, cheek, or jaw.
For a chin, the doctor will make a cut either inside your lower lip or under your chin. Then he’ll create a pocket into which he’ll slide the implant. For the cheek, the incision is in the skin inside the mouth, or underneath the eye, or, if part of your face lift, the doctor will use the incisions he’s already made. For lower jaw implants, incisions are made in the mouth. The pocket is created, and the implant is slid in.
I think we all have the wrong idea that an implant, be it in the chin, cheek, or jaw, can move once it’s put inside the pocket. This is highly unlikely. “The implant pocket is a very limited space, just large enough to accommodate it,” said San Diego plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Singer. “You use sutures to keep it where it’s supposed to be. Plus, the body’s normal response is to form scar tissue around it to lock it in place. Sometimes, implants do move. If the pocket is too big, they might rotate. If the position is not ideal to start, there might be some swelling and asymmetry. Also, if you have an injury, you can push it out of place. But an implant won’t suddenly migrate from cheek to jaw.”
The operation takes about an hour and costs about $2,000 per implant. If you are doing it at the same time as the standard face lift, add that time to the length of your procedure. Recovery for facial implants isn’t too bad. With a jaw implant, eating and talking will be tricky for up to a week. The inside-mouth stitches will dissolve in ten days.
Any way to get a lift without scalpels? Well, you can have wrinkles attended to with fillers or have a chemical peel to resurface your skin. But if you need a SMAS lift, fillers and peels aren’t going to do the job.
Warning: You might have heard about a Non-Surgical Face Lift, aka Thread Lift, Feather Lift, or the Lunchtime Face Lift. Be careful! They’re not at all what they seem to be. Everyone was very excited when they came out, but the results are just not so good. My experts tell me that the thread lift is a clear case of “sounds too good to be true.” In fact, any procedure that’s marketed as a “lunchtime” cure is probably going to be ineffective and a waste of time and money. A doctor recently told me, “There is no magic solution. Spin and hype don’t measure up to reality.”
Warning issued.
If you’re still curious, ideal candidates for the feather lift are forty-five and younger, have good skin elasticity, no turkey neck, and are not afraid of needles. If the standard face lift is like buying a house, and the mid-face lift is like a starter apartment, the feather lift is a cheap summer rental.
Well, maybe a tad longer than just the summer. The results of a feather lift can last up to five years, or so goes the claim. By the time your face falls again, you’ll be old enough/ready for a standard face lift. Call the thread lift a stopgap, a warm-up, or trying a face lift on for size without actually getting one.
The thread in question was designed by a Russian plastic surgeon in the late 1990s. Called the APTOS thread, it’s a single fiber of plastic non-dissolving or absorbable polypropylene. Why APTOS? Well, “ptosis” is the medical term for sagging. The “A” is for “anti.” Hence APTOS Threads, the anti-droop suture of choice.
It’s FDA-approved, stamped, sealed, good to go.
The fiber has tiny barbs along the length of it. The doctor will use a long needle, threaded with the barbed suture, and insert it into the droopy area under the skin. He arranges the APTOS (or any number of other brands) in the skin so that the barbs hook into place, providing a support structure for the tissue. He might use a few threads or a couple dozen, especially creating a supportive net in the face underneath the skin. The threads are deep under the layer of skin and invisible on the surface. What’s more, new collagen grows around the threads, making the skin even tighter as the months go by. The whole procedure takes less than an hour under local anesthesia. Expect to pay $350 to $500 per thread.
So, okay, a feather lift may be quick, easy, and inexpensive, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for you. There are risks to consider: the usual grab-bag of bruising, swelling, infection, and bleeding. Also, weird dimpling, asymmetry, the off chance that a thread will come undone and poke out of its entry hole, a thread breaking and half your face falling down, a thread that can be seen or felt under the skin.
In all of those instances, the thread will have to be removed, replaced, or repositioned. They won’t dissolve. They’re yours to keep.
The thing about face lifts: If it’s a good one, you shouldn’t be able to tell it’s happened. The liftee should just look “better,” “rested,” and “more confident.” If the lift is extreme or botched, you can tell in a second, such as the face lifts on:
Mickey Rourke, once a hottie, now a nottie. He’s had the screws tightened a few too many times.
Sylvester Stallone looks like Rambo did a search-and-destroy mission on his face.
Burt Reynolds has, apparently, spent the last five years locked in a wind tunnel.
Joan Van Ark has been lifted more times than Lindsay Lohan’s mini-skirt.
Melanie Griffith, in an attempt to stay as pretty as she once was, has, reportedly, had many surgeries, each one adding a century to her appearance.
Robert Redford’s face lift was a bit of a shock. He should have been doing little tweaks all along and not showing up at Sundance looking like a completely different person.
Donatella Versace has started to morph into a platinum-blond Muppet.
Janice Dickinson, a former model, tells everyone who’ll listen about her multiple operations.* Her plastic surgery is no big secret. Her face gets more severe with each procedure. She could open a can with that nose.
She could slice bread with her cheekbones.
Kissing her cheek, you could cut yourself.
As for me? My face has had more blades on it than a hockey rink. Last season, my plastic surgeon won the Stanley Cup—and that’s good! He considers my numerous procedures his own personal “War on Terror.” A war, he is proud to say, he has successfully won.