“I saw my mother in the mirror”: why more and more women in their 40s are opting for facelifts

One morning, a 44-year-old woman looked in the mirror and saw her mother’s reflection. Pauline* experienced this triggering moment shortly after turning forty. Today, more and more women in their fifties – and sometimes well before – are looking to facelifts as a response to this feeling of no longer recognizing themselves.

When the trigger hits in your forties

Pauline tugs at the folds around her mouth with her fingertips. She finds her jowls hanging down and regrets this tired look, even though she feels in great shape. “Very early on, I found that my face was hanging. But it was really the day when I felt I could see my mother,” she confides. Pauline was 44 when she booked her appointment. She will have the operation the year she turns 45.

Yet this procedure has long been associated with women over 60. According to theAmerican Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, around one-third of facelifts are performed between the ages of 35 and 55. This shift can also be seen in French practices.

“Just a few years ago, 60-year-old patients would say to me, “But I’m too young for a facelift.” Today, women show me before-and-after photos and ask, ‘I’m 45, can we get started?” says cosmetic surgeon Dr. Natalie Rajaonarivelo.

The “deep plane”, the new totem of social networks

Denise Richards, 55, posted the before-and-after of her procedure on Instagram, confiding to Allure magazine that she wanted to “put things back where they were before”, without transforming her features. As a result, social networks have found their new fetish term: the “deep plane facelift”. A technical term circulating among aspiring experts.

That’s the technique Pauline chose. “I had read so much about the subject that I came to the appointment knowing what I wanted. I showed photos of myself ten years earlier. I wanted a fresh look.

“People have identified this term, via the networks, as the common thread between these very beautiful facelift results, which rejuvenate without freezing.” – Dr Alexandre Marchac, surgeon specializing in facial aesthetic surgery.

Dr Marchac explains how methods have evolved: twenty years ago, we used to lift the skin and pull it. Then we mastered the Smas (superficial musculoaponeurotic system). Today, acting on the “deep plane”, located beneath the Smas, enables tissues to be repositioned without altering expressions.

Beautyfication: a beautifying gesture, not just a rejuvenating one

In the United States, where some estimates flirt with the six-figure mark, these advances have ushered in a new era. Dr. Ariel Rad, a cosmetic surgeon in Washington, D.C., notes that the age at which this procedure is claimed has shifted into the 40s and even 30s over the past five years. “It’s a new approach where facial anatomy is enhanced not just to rejuvenate, but to optimize faces, to make them more beautiful.”

This is known as “beautyfication”: a new wave of patients is not looking for a face from before, but a more harmonious, more defined face. The beginnings of sagging, pronounced nasolabial folds, an undefined jawline – these are all signs that can, according to Dr. Rajaonarivelo, lead to the consideration of structural repositioning, “regardless of age”.

What’s more, the result must now be forgotten. The question “What has she done to her face? The objective shared by practitioners: to avoid distorting anything.

• The deep plane acts on a plane below the Smas to reposition the fabrics.
• The technique can be combined with eyelid blepharoplasty or lipofilling.
• Some surgeons operate under local anaesthetic to preserve natural expressions.
• In the United States, the age of patients has shifted towards the forties and even the thirties.
• The results allow you to look ten years younger, without freezing your face.

Injections in decline

If facial surgery is regaining such appeal, it’s also because “fillers” – such as hyaluronic acid injections – have shown their limits: a heavier face, migration of the product, aging effect. In the United States, the term “filler fatigue” is now used . On the other hand, many patients clearly prefer surgery at the first signs of sagging.

On the networks, the faces of stars like Demi Moore and Jennifer Lopez fuel this blurring of ages. We don’t really know whether these figures embody technical progress, the triumph of filters, or the future faces of maturity. Perhaps all three.

An increasingly premature sense of aging

This movement is part of a wider trend. In France, 52% of French women aged 18 to 35 say they have had or plan to have recourse to aesthetic medicine. What’s more, it’s no longer unusual to hear young women explain that they started Botox in their early thirties, “as a preventive measure”.

“The feeling of aging is much earlier today than it was in the past,” says David Le Breton, sociologist and author of the essay Des Visages, une anthropologie (ed. Métailié, 2022). Aesthetic anxiety appears long before old age. The Cut magazine has conceptualized the rise of undetectable procedures as the advent of a face-fantasy: the “Forever-35 Face”. A standard age deemed socially acceptable – young enough to remain desirable, adult enough to be credible.

“I’m all for aging, but what I want is to age well,” argues Carla, 52, who treated herself to a blepharoplasty for her 50th birthday. “I work, I go out, I travel, I do sport: I want my face to reflect how I feel inside.”

In our practices, this is a recurring theme. Dr Marchac qualifies it, however: “We can make patients ten years younger. But we are not currently capable of preventing people from aging. And what if this is, in fact, the best news of all?

(*) The first name has been changed.

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