The Face of Plastic Surgery

Of all the types of plastic surgery, the most practical one is the facelift. Why? Let’s face it: You can more unobtrusively cover, shroud, pad, or camouflage nearly all other parts of your body more easily than you can hide the imperfections on your face.

If you’re going to recommend someone have plastic surgery, the facelift is the one you probably want to avoid. Why? There’s something very personal about a person’s face.

Of course, there are those people you might be pretty sure Groucho Marx had in mind when he said this: “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.” You know the type: those with the proverbial “face only a mother could love,” and yet, if you were that person’s mother, you’re pretty sure you’d have a hard time proudly displaying that person’s pictures in your living room. Maybe the hallway or closet wall would do. While beauty may be only skin-deep, some say that ugly does go all the way to the bone. Eyes have been often called the “windows to the soul,” and, of course, they’re central to a person’s visage. Maybe it’s that spiritual connection that makes calling someone “ugly” really seem insulting.

Perhaps the most personal area of asexual physical touch is a touch to the face. Maybe it’s not asexual, entirely, though. Kissing is perhaps one of the most common gestures of a romance. Why? In part, this is due to the sensitivity of one’s lips. One’s lips contain some of the most sensitive skin on a person’s body; in fact, along with a person’s fingertips, they contain more touch receptors, or Meissner’s corpuscles, that detect light touch. Even without kissing, though, a slight caress of a person’s face can make them feel loved and cherished, as much as a slap across or spit into the face can give an insult like nothing else.

Part of the reason some people might object to plastic surgery, and facelifts, in particular, is that the signs of age can be seen as trophies, in a way. William Shakespeare numbered himself among them when he wrote “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” The more straightforward American writer, Mark Twain, wrote about the same basic idea: “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”

If wrinkles merely reminded of happy days, they would understandably be positive. Between “smile lines” around one’s mouth and “crow’s feet” at the corners of one’s eyes, these permanent reminders of the “good old days” might introduce more smiles in some. However, in others, such lines disclose the distance between those days and now, along with the shorter number of years between now and “never again.” Wrinkles aren’t just for smiles, either; they can show engravings of worry and hardship, too.

In this digital age, face-to-face communication is enjoying resurgence. Developments such as “Face Time” available on Apple’s iPhone 4 and the premier social networking site Facebook make this clear. The face represents that personal touch, that non-automated real live connection everybody wants.

So if you did have plastic surgery, would you choose a facelift? It might enhance that personal, positive impression that you give.

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