CNN
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Kim Haberly’s dark blonde hair hangs behind her shoulders away from her face. Her almond-shaped eyes are faintly ringed by the yellow tone of an almost-healed bruise. There are two thumb-sized divots next to her hairline (barely perceptible until she points it out) from her recent temple lift, a cosmetic surgery that lifts the outer brow. Ironically, her swollen face looks plump and round despite her partial buccal fat removal — a procedure that extracts the soft pads of tissue found inside the cheeks to create a slimmer face. Still, she could pop to the store without raising so much as an eyebrow from on-lookers.
It’s not until Haberly turns her face to the right and raises the camera close to her ear, displaying two freshly sutured incisions, that you might suspect she is fresh out of a facelift.
“I’ve woken up really swollen today because I slept on my side,” Haberly told CNN over a video call from her hotel in Turkey. Last month, Haberly traveled over 7,700 miles from her home in Perth, Australia to receive one of the most invasive facial surgeries available: a deep plane facelift. The advanced lifting technique — which has become a favorite of specialist surgeons for its apparent longer lasting results — not only repositions the top layer of skin (known as an endoscopic facelift) but also the complex network of tissue and fibrous muscles below.
At 37, Haberly, who also had a neck lift operation, is almost a decade more junior than the youngest average facelift candidate in Australia, and in the eyes of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), is at least a whopping 18 years ahead of schedule.
Traditionally used to reduce signs of aging, the facelift is often associated with those in later life. In the US, almost 60% of facelift patients in 2023 were aged between 55 and 69, according to ASPS. Similarly Generation X, which encompasses those aged from 45 to 60, were the primary age group seeking out facelifts in Australia that same year, research from the Australasian College of Cosmetic Surgery and Medicine shows. And although there is no published data on the average age of a facelift patient in the UK, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) recently reported the procedure is “more common among those 50 and above.”
Yet, in the last few years, an increasing number of younger people have been seeking out the surgery — not as an anti-aging method but to finesse their features, having grown up in an extremely digital world where their physical appearances are constantly on show. According to the ASPS, the number of facelift patients in 2023 aged between 20-29 and 30-39 each jumped by 7% compared to the previous year, while those from the 40-54 age group grew by just 3%.
Dr. Jonathan Zelken, a board-certified plastic surgeon based in Newport Beach, California, who has performed a number of facelifts, has found that some of his clients in their 20s and 30s “want sharper jaw lines, sharper cheeks, sharper brows,” he told CNN over the phone. Rather than eliminate wrinkles, their goal is to enhance their existing appearance, Dr. Zelken explained. “It’s not a rejuvenation strategy. It’s a beautification strategy.”
Mainstream appeal
The first known facelift was performed at Berlin’s Charite Hospital over 120 years ago. In 1901, an intrepid German doctor called Eugene von Holländer was approached by a Polish aristocrat looking for smoother skin. With her hands clasped to the sides of her face, the well-to-do woman is said to have demonstrated her request by lifting the corners of her mouth and cheeks. But Holländer was initially reluctant to operate, given that no such operation existed. Ultimately, as he recorded in his 1912 medical paper, he fell victim to “the art of feminine persuasion” and readied his scalpel. While there is little public information about patient zero, including her name, Holländer’s notes of her “aging wrinkles” and “drooping cheeks” suggest she was around the age of a prototypical candidate.
Over a century later, the surgery is breaking new ground once again. This time, with those under 40. It’s a controversial procedure, but Dr. Zelken is largely in support of the newfound interest from this burgeoning demographic, whose operations have produced some of his “favorite” results.
“It’s almost like you are doing a filter for social media in real life by doing these procedures,” said Dr. Zelken, who was hesitant to share the cost of his work, but pointed to Southern California’s ballpark range of $30,000 to $100,000 per facelift. While he acknowledged that a 20-something year old looking for a facelift would be a “yellow flag,” he wouldn’t be deterred solely on that. “It’s hard to put an age minimum on this procedure,” Dr. Zelken reasoned. Even where there are no drooping cheeks or aging wrinkles, “you can achieve really attractive change,” he said.
That’s also the opinion of some facelift patients. Emily Cipryk was 28 years old when she flew from Toronto, Canada to Istanbul, Turkey for a deep plane mid-facelift — a procedure that raises the tissue and skin around the corner of eyes as well as cheeks. “I really wanted to enhance myself, just to feel good about myself again,” she told CNN on a phone call. Cipryk’s previous job in financial technology during the pandemic meant she was on Zoom calls for hours a day, with her face constantly reflected back at her. “I partied a lot, from university until my late 20s, and it caught up with me… I just didn’t look good,” she said.
Cipryk received a total of six surgeries at once, including a blepharoplasty, lip lift, a rhinoplasty and partial buccal fat removal, which cost a total of €13,000 (about $14,140). The process was entirely financed by her fiancé, who also traveled with her to Turkey. “I did six procedures at once so I could just get it all done,” said Cipryk. She noted that she was “very happy” with the results.
While Cipryk’s procedures went well, she cautioned others to “be careful” when selecting a surgeon in Turkey. “People get ahead of themselves and think, ‘Oh, it’s so cheap, I can afford it.’ And they might go to someone who’s not even a real plastic surgeon,” she said. “I’ve heard of people going to a real estate agent to get a hair transplant (because) they’re not doing their research.” In 2023, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons published a joint statement with the Turkish Society of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons warning of a rise in “serious complications and even deaths” linked to the “significant increase in numbers of patients travelling abroad for aesthetic plastic surgery.”
Online pressures
Using plastic surgery to maintain a youthful and symmetric appearance is not a new concept. Cosmetic procedures were first popularized in the early 20th century by Hollywood actors concerned with enhancing their on-screen appearance. But with the advent of social media and and the popularization of selfies, the pressures once reserved for those on the world stage now affect many individuals.
Catherine*, a 33-year-old from Southern California, spends much of her time on Instagram and TikTok. “I’m watching videos of girls who are in their early 20s that are Instagram influencers and also celebrities who get the best work done,” she told CNN over a phone call. “So, you’re looking at all these people who are a lot younger and they’re perfect, and you’re really chasing that, even though that’s maybe not attainable for the average person.”
For Haberly, the desire for a facelift was partly born out of the rapid weight loss she achieved through semaglutide injections, which led her to drop about 15 pounds. Around three years ago, she started to notice loose skin around her jawline and began using sports tape — designed to support muscles and ligament injuries — to hide these areas.
It also didn’t help that as part of Haberly’s job as a hair colorist, she would often film her clients’ coloring sessions and post them on Instagram. Despite not being the focal point of the video, Haberly would often receive disparaging comments such as “You look haggard, you look old.” Haberly recounted: “That was probably more when the camera was lower. I would always know when I was going to get those (comments) because I could see myself when I posted that video.”
Ultimately, Haberly opted to undergo a facelift surgery, as she hoped it would “help the longevity of my career, which is really important.”
How young is too young?
Some surgeons are more wary of operating on younger patients.
Haberly initially struggled to access the type of facelift she wanted in Australia — a country which requires a psychiatric test prior to a consultation with a cosmetic surgeon. She passed her mental health checks but was warned by local doctors on having a drastic procedure at her age. One surgeon offered an alternative, less invasive option that involved repositioning the skin rather than removing it entirely.
Harberly was recommended by another doctor to wait until she was 50 for a facelift — but she didn’t want to reverse the clock, she wanted to pause it. “I want it now while I’m traveling the world and I’m out there and my face is everywhere,” she said. A similar sentiment was shared by Naomi*, a 45-year-old patient of Dr. Zelken’s who had a deep plane facelift last year. “I want to enjoy it now,” she told CNN. “I don’t want to wait until things get worse and worse… Let’s get ahead of it.”
On why a facelift appealed to her, Catherine explained: “I went through eight years of school plus grad school. I think the stress starts to show on you.” She added that she also felt insecure about some “asymmetry” caused by a medically necessary neck operation in her 20s, and after years of consistent Botox and laser therapy, she wanted “something that was 100% guaranteed to give me a result.”
Catherine’s operation, which took place at her local clinic and included a lower face and deep plane neck lift, as well as the extra expense of overnight monitoring from a nurse, cost between $25,000 and $30,000.
However, there’s reason to be cautious, according to Dr. Kelly Killeen, a board-certified plastic surgeon based in Beverly Hills. “The older population, they’re looking at the surgery because they want to restore something they had in their youth. Whereas younger people are sometimes chasing something that doesn’t exist,” she told CNN over a phone call.
Face-tuning apps play a role in this, Killeen explained, pointing to facial laxity — a term used by surgeons to refer to looser skin — as an example that may seem unappealing but is expected with daily movement and neck function. “It doesn’t feel normal (to younger patients) because with the way people edit their photos and shoot their videos, you can’t sometimes see that celebrities have laxity in (physical) areas (that) bend,” explained Killeen, pointing to the neck and jaw as examples.
Health and safety
Whether young facelift patients encounter greater risks than those in their 50s and 60s is disputed from surgeon to surgeon. In Dr. Zelken’s view, surgery complications such as nerve damage or muscle paralysis could be felt more deeply by a younger patient, as opposed to someone older.
One disadvantage of starting young is the higher likelihood of repeat operations, warned Californian surgeon Dr. Carl Truesdale. “Someone who is searching for a facelift when they’re younger are less tolerant of age in their face, so they’re going to be more sensitive to seeing age in their face when they’re older, right?” he said.
The more surgeries that are performed over a lifetime, the higher potential there is for traumatized tissue, Dr. Truesdale added, noting that revision operations are inherently more challenging. He estimated that last year he turned down facelift operations for around 50 people under the age of 40, with the reason that they “don’t need it.”
Determined to undergo the procedure, Haberly eventually scheduled a virtual consultation with a doctor in Turkey, communicating with a receptionist via Whatsapp and sending through photos of her face, pinching her skin and moving her head as directed. Her surgeon in Istanbul then sent through a procedure plan along with the price — $19,425 — and she flew overseas.
When Haberly woke up the day after her surgery, the sensation in her body was unbearable. The swelling and bruising she went on to experience was underestimated by doctors, who weaned her off pain medication prematurely, leading to “excruciating pain” as a result, she said. “For two days straight, I was shaking (and) trembling,” Haberly recalled. Watching the clock on the hospital wall in a foreign country, minutes seemed to stretch into hours. “I remember saying to my mom, ‘What if I die from this pain? What if this pain never goes away?’” she said.
By day five, Haberly didn’t require any more pain relief. “I’d never recommend anyone do this. But you know, pain becomes distant,” she said. “I can see how happy I’m going to be with the results.”
*Patients have requested for their names to be changed.