Good plastic surgery is subtle, often completely invisible to the untrained eye. Poorly done plastic surgery, though? It feels almost unmistakable. Even if you struggle to articulate precisely what makes it bad, you simply know it when you see it. The face just looks off.
After seeing a facelift too far, I decided to ask one of the foremost experts in plastic surgery, Terry Dubrow, to explain why some people—specifically, many famous men—appear so odd after returning from an extended trip to Surgical Town. Depending on your taste in television, you may recognize Dr. Dubrow as one of the two surgeons on E!’s Botched (or its spin-off, Botched: Rewind) or as the husband of The Real Housewives of New York star Heather Dubrow.
According to Dr. Dubrow, it’s all in the eyes. “A man at 35 has excess upper eyelid skin—he’s supposed to have lower brows and hooded eyelids,” he told The Daily Beast. After showing me a few examples of plastic surgery gone wrong—including an unnamed A-lister whose newly adjusted face is currently the talk of the town, and not the good kind of talk—I saw it. And I can’t unsee it.
“You look at 80-year-old, very famous women who’ve had facelifts and they’re snatched—and we go, ‘Yeah, they have a facelift, it’s okay that they’re snatched,’” says Dr. Dubrow. As a man gets older, on the other hand, “even if he’s completely snatched and tightened, you can tell he’s 70, 80, and it’s just that visual discordance between an 80-year-old guy that you know is 80, but he’s completely without any wrinkles and any laxity.”
With more men than ever seeking cosmetic procedures, there are bound to be some growing pains. But what is behind the rise in anti-aging treatments for men? Less stigma, for one, and an increased vigilance toward our appearances, which skyrocketed with front-facing cameras and the Zoom era. Still, plastic surgery’s prevalence among men has seen a slow climb.
“It was [once] very taboo for men,” says Dr. Dubrow. “In the late 90s, early 2000s, they were doing Botox, then they started doing their upper eyelids—and that was their intro to plastic surgery procedures.” Eventually, this evolved to an acceptance of fillers and liposuction, says Dr. Dubrow, but there are still some surgeries that remain taboo. “It’s still not ‘okay’ to admit to a facelift—but men are obviously doing facelifts now.”
Plastic surgery can pose a unique challenge to famous men whose appearance, particularly their face, is directly tied to their reason for being a public figure, says Dr. Dubrow—actors and models, for instance. If you’re not recognizable, if the face everyone’s used to seeing on your looks less and less like you, will you still be cast in the roles audiences are used to seeing you play up to this point?
While this insight may not appear relevant to the average Joe, it may explain why it’s easy to name celebrity women who’ve undergone noticeable series of plastic surgery procedures and stayed in the public eye, at the tops of movie bills, and on the runways, while it’s debatably more challenging to do the same with men in these industries. Plus, even if you’re not a movie star, you want your loved ones to think you look great for your age—not stretched and strange.
For men looking to look younger and feel better about their appearance, the best journeys start with a solid, reputable surgeon who can offer a clear idea of what is realistic.
“Make sure you go to a plastic surgeon who has hospital privileges to do that procedure,” says Dr. Dubrow. “If they have hospital privileges, the hospital won’t let ‘em operate unless they have a clean record and they’re board-certified.” And take it easy on your eyes, guys.
The post Why Some Men’s Plastic Surgery Looks So Strange appeared first on The Daily Beast.
