Would a Face-lift Make You Happy?

This column first ran in Valerie Monroe’s newsletter, How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, which you can subscribe to on Substack.

I’m delivering this post to you with a Duchenne smile — that’s the one that engages your eyes, not just your mouth. So when you smile, your face’s upper half is engaged with its lower half. Why is this important? Studies show smiling can create a neurological loop that actually lifts your mood. One study showed that the Duchenne smile had the greatest effect (out of all smiles) in lowering one’s heart rate after a stressful activity. (Psst: Keep your crow’s-feet. They’re the least unbeautiful wrinkles.)

There’s also a selfish reason this post is delivered with a smile. Sure, I want you to feel happy. But, as Arthur C. Brooks mentions in a column for The Atlantic, happiness can increase our attractiveness, making it more likely we’ll be rewarded by others (hello, readers!). If this strikes you as a no-brainer conclusion, me too. But when you think about it in terms of aging and attractiveness, there are interesting implications.

If happiness increases attractiveness, aren’t we in a sinking boat if we feel, as many of us do, that our appearance makes us unhappy as we age? The more I considered this, the more I felt like I was drowning in an eddy of circular thinking and confusing emotions. What to do? What to do? When I came up for air, I still felt dizzy. Maybe because face-lifts were on my mind.

If a face-lift will make you happy and you can afford it, then go for it; it’s a practical way to provide yourself with a temporary happiness fix. The same goes for treatments like neuromodulator injections, filler (just choose your injector very carefully), and other in-office aesthetic procedures.

Though my personal goal is to have healthy-looking skin, there are aspects of my age (73) manifesting, like jowling and fine lines and wrinkles. Another manifestation of aging is that the corners of our mouths droop, making us look impatient or fretful when we’re not — intensifying resting bitch face (RBF) if we’re already prone to it. That situation is exacerbated by an unfortunate combination of gravity, bone loss, and reduced soft-tissue volume. Neuromodulator injections and filler can help lift the corners of your mouth, but I’m not into injections in that area, because there’s a slight risk of losing the ability to enunthiate thertain conthonanths.

I can see what many doctors — and probably you — would call “flaws” in my RBF. Sometimes I catch my reflection in a harsh light, and it scares me; how can I be this person who looks so much older than I feel? The dissonance is jarring. But like a blue mood, it passes. When I need to goose its exit, I look into my eyes ’til I can see myself again — oh, there you are! Then, the thought of taking a knife to my face or neck feels like a beheading. It is not the thing that lifts my spirits.

I’ve pored over before-and-after photos of women who’ve had various kinds of surgeries, including upper and lower eye-lifts and face-lifts. Often, though I can see a difference, the difference doesn’t seem significant enough to consider surgery myself. My friends who’ve had face-lifts say they were compelled because they hated — hated, a strong word — one specific thing about their appearance, most often their neck (which shows aging quickly because the skin is thin and exposed), or they say they look tired or angry when they’re not. They’re all women who understand the poisons of sexism, paternalism, and all the other “isms” that snake through our unhealthy beauty culture. Still, their choice made them happy.

But I’ll also point out something I’ve previously mentioned that’s critical: Research has shown that a face-lift won’t necessarily result in happiness because you look more attractive — because maybe you will and maybe you won’t, objectively. Your pleasure will come from your own subjective belief that you’re more attractive. And since confidence begets confidence, you may enjoy a cascade of positive effects thanks to your new conviction.

The strongest correlation between beauty and success may not be with objective but rather self-perceived attractiveness. So what contributes most impactfully to success? Confidence. And where you get yours from — choosing a flash of skin-toning laser, choosing a face-lift, choosing neither of those — doesn’t really matter, does it? As long as you know why you made your choice and you’re content with it. For now, I’ve made mine: Despite the cumulative and unwelcome adornments of age, I’m as attached to this face as I am to the heart that beats below it.

Originally published on June 4.