The Face Lift: A Look Back

It seems sometimes like plastic surgery is something that just came to light a few years ago. Contrary to those assumptions, however, the earliest forms of cosmetic surgery go back thousands of years. The face lift itself isn’t quite that old, but it had its genesis over 100 years ago. The procedure has changed a lot since then, of course. The work women (and some men) are getting done today make the ones from the 90s look primitive, but that is the way of technology and medicine. Still, a look forward benefits from a look backwards. Here are the humble beginnings of this miraculous surgery.

The first face lift, performed in the years between 1900 and 1910, would have borne little resemblance to the procedure done in offices around the world today. The doctor would have removed a bit of skin from the upper scalp and stretched the remaining skin to close the wound. The appearance smoothed out some of the lines and wrinkles in the face, of course, but the look was far from natural. Making things worse, the effects didn’t last very long. A few months later, the skin would drop back to its regular appearance.

Time and progress led to better forms of the face lift. Leading up to the 1950s, doctors began changing the way they created the incisions and began making adjustments to the actual muscles beneath the skin. This made it possible for these surgeries to have lasting effects, although the results themselves were still quite unnatural looking when compared with the results that are possible today. Having said that, of course, there are still celebrities who get terrible work done all the time, to the point where they look like a different person when they are finished healing. 

Today, with the right surgeon and the right mindset going in, you can have a face lift that not only turns back the wheels of time, but looks completely natural. There are women walking around today in their 40s, 50s, and beyond who don’t look a day over the age of 35. It would have seemed impossible even to Ponce De Leon in his search for the Fountain of Youth, but it has become reality. When combined with other forms of cosmetics such as Botox, women and men no longer have to be a slave to their numerical age. These surgeries won’t keep us young forever, but they can certainly make us look that way.