When I was a kid, Death Becomes Her was my favourite film. If you haven’t seen it, the basic premise is that Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep play two women aged 50-ish who hate each other and discover the fountain of youth in the Hollywood Hills.
They both pay a fortune to drink a magical brew that throws the ageing process into reverse. Or, as Lisle, the witchy, ageless procurer of such magic, says: “Drink that potion, and you’ll never grow even one day older. Don’t drink it, and continue to watch yourself rot.” The catch, as they both discover, is that they can’t grow old because they can no longer die, no matter how hard they try to kill one another.
As a 10-year-old, I loved watching the slapstick silliness of Goldie Hawn smacking Meryl Streep in the face with a shovel and the then-groundbreaking special effects of a pair of boobs de-ageing in real time. The biting social satire on women, vanity, ageing, and just how far some people are willing to go to remain “forever young”, was totally lost on me.
Meryl Streep was only 43 years old when she made that film and Goldie Hawn was 46. I, dear reader, am 44. I am now around the same age as the actresses chosen to play women desperately fending off the ageing process and struggling to keep their looks, and what’s more, there is a new potion in town. The question we must ask ourselves once again is: would we take it? I am, of course, talking about the rise of the deep plane facelift.
If I were a sensible, rational woman, this is the point in the article where I would tell you that I would never do such a thing. That we must embrace ageing in all its natural glory and reject the imposition of patriarchal, elitist beauty standards. Unfortunately for all concerned, I am not that person. I am weak-willed, vain, and easily influenced. If I were offered a potion to stay eternally young, my only moral quandary would be if I could recycle the bottle it came in. Would I go under the knife to knock a few years off? Of course I would, and in the interest of serious journalism, I have been investigating what that would entail.
The old-school facelift worked by moving the superficial musculoaponeurotic system, or SMAS. That is the skin and surface layer tissues. If this is pulled too tight, it can look like the patient has bungee jumped with the rope tied to the back of their head. However, the deep plane facelift is the next generation of facial surgery and goes below the SMAS to move the whole face, muscles and all, back up to where it used to be, resulting in a much more natural look.
This might sound gruesome, but the results are impressive. How impressive? Have you seen Kris Jenner recently? She is 70 goddamn years old and looks younger than I do. Refreshingly, Jenner has admitted that her dramatically younger face is down to a facelift – though I’m not sure any other explanation would have washed. Not even the most ardent Kardashian fans would have believed this transformation was down to kale smoothies and an SPF cream.
Others rumoured to have quaffed the deep plane brew include Brad Pitt, Anne Hathaway, Emma Stone, George Clooney and Emily Blunt. The telltale signs are looking un-fucking-believable with a jawline so taut it could be used as a Salvation Army drum, and denying that any work has been done. The phenomenon has been dubbed the “forever 35 face”, and you can bet your sweet SMAS I want to know more. Did I mention that I’m easily influenced?
For the purposes of this article, I spoke to three different surgeons who are offering this service. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a cosmetic consultation before, but it is genuinely bizarre. They all start off by complimenting how good you look, but quickly move on to pinching your jowls and wobbling your turkey neck. It was like a mechanic peeping under your hood and estimating the size of the job, while shaking his head and sucking air in through his teeth. It was humbling to say the least.
I went to enquire about the deep plane face lift, but it was amazing how many add-ons and upgrades were available. “If you’re getting the facelift, why not get the neck lift as well and maybe a temporal brow lift? How about a lip lift?” It was like supersizing at McDonald’s.
I learned two things during my jaunt as an investigative journalist. Firstly, just like Lisle in Death Becomes Her, plastic surgeons are seductive and beguiling people, dangling the answer to your wrinkly prayers right in your furrowed face. And secondly, achieving the “forever 35 face” will likely mean a face, neck, and brow lift, which will set you back around £20,000. That was the average cost I was quoted. It might be more in London; my research was confined to Yorkshire. It is certainly more in America with a celebrity surgeon. Kris Jenner’s facelift is rumoured to have cost anywhere from $150,000 (£113,676) to $250,000 (£189,441), but she probably wasn’t shopping in the Whitby area.
I almost wish the cost had been in the hundreds of thousands, because that would have been an end to my even considering this right there and then. Don’t get me wrong, £20,000 is more than enough to force me to behave myself. But it’s also about the same amount as you might expect to pay for a flash car, a wedding, or a new kitchen – and given the choice, I would rather have a new face than a new kitchen.
But alas, I am in no position to purchase any of those things without going into considerable debt, and my editor has point-blank refused to let me claim £20,000 on expenses, so I have reached the end of my facelift journey for now. This is the point that many others get to and decide to travel abroad for cheaper surgery, but that option is not for me. I might be vain and weak-willed, but I am also a wimp and were I ever to let someone carve up my face, it would be done within a taxi ride of my own home.
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The moral of Death Becomes Her is that the obsession with youth and beauty is futile and ultimately destructive, and I was half hoping that as I investigated Hollywood’s latest magical treatment, I would arrive at a similar conclusion.
But I haven’t. If I had the money, I would absolutely do it. I’d probably get my tits done as well. My boundary here is financial, rather than moral. Judge me if you wish, but I know I am not alone.
The topic of plastic surgery is always a contentious one. As far as I can tell, women in the public eye are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they resist the knife, there will be a slew of criticism about “looking their age” and if they drink the potion, the criticism is equally as fierce from those who feel they have let the side down and are setting a bad example. I’m sure I’ll get criticism for even thinking of a facelift without disdain and derision. That being the case, you may as well do whatever the hell you want with your face and your money. I certainly will.
It looks like I’ll be sticking with Botox and apricot scrub for a while longer yet. But if you should see me in the near future looking suspiciously refreshed, just know I either got the expenses cleared, or I found a witch in Hollywood who takes Klarna.
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