Why do facelifts look so unnatural? What prevents plastic surgeons from making seniors look like they did when they were 30?

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When a 70 year old gets a facelift and plastic surgery, it looks like a 70 year old who had a facelift. Why is it impossible to convincingly reverse the effects of aging by tightening skin and re-sculpting?

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27 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

This kind of has two answers.

First is because the human brain has developed to recognize and memorize faces. It’s one of the things our brain is best at. Which is why we see faces where there aren’t any, like the front of cars or in the clouds.

So, you have to be really really perfect to trick the brain, because you’re basically trying to convince the brain at what it is best at, that a face is a natural face. Which in on its own is extremely difficult to do.

But even if you did get the face perfect, you have more problems, the rest of the body.

If you see a 30 year old face on a 60 year old neck, that is going to look unnatural, or a 30 year old face with the hair of a 60 year old, that is going to look unnatural. The human body is one whole thing, so when one part doesn’t seem like it matches the rested that looks unnatural to us.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Older skin isn’t just sagging, it has different properties compared to younger one. Like not so elastic, thinner and a bit translucent. There’s no way around it really.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In addition to all the other good answers I can see, I also want to point out the survivorship bias inherent in your question–if someone gets a really good facelift that DOESN’T look unnatural, you probably wouldn’t realize that you’re looking at someone who’s had a facelift. You only notice the people who have not-so-natural looking facelifts.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You can’t put everything back where it used to be. For example the skin beneath your eyes, you can’t pull it up and create new eyelids, you have to pull the excess to the side. Same with the skin beneath your nose and mouth and chin. It has sagged straight down, but you can’t pull it back up, you can only pull it to the side.

My dermatologist recommended microneedling to a specific depth that helps your skin create new collagen. I’m nowhere near 70 but seems like a decent preventive plan.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Also, sub cutaneous fat distribution changes with time. That changes the general appearance of the face.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I actually read an article about this a while back and the answer is, aging does not just cause a wrinkling and sagging to the skin but changes in underlying support structures. In addition to breakdown of our collagen and thinning of subcutaneous fat, we lose bone mass in our face as we age and this loss can be substantial.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’ve noticed Hollywood actors don’t have drastic surgeries anymore, they make small mm adjustments, jaw a little more angled, cheek slightly higher, if you look at some pictures you’ll see small adjustments that enhances their attractiveness. Look up Charlize Theron and you’ll notice the difference, slight but effective

Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s a lot more to our perception of a person than just their face. One can get that stretched, filled, puffed up, covered in toner, etc. but the rest gives it away. Arms, hands, and the rest of the structure are tough to change.

That’s why you see and recognize what’s obviously 30’s something faces on [60’s something people](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/newscms/2019_09/2764361/190225-mar-a-lago-trumpettes-cs-916a.jpg).

Anonymous 0 Comments

Similar: I am a professional seamstress. People often will say, “That’s so well made, I would have never guessed it’s homemade.”
First of all, it’s professionally made, not homemade. (I’ve been sewing for money for over 30 years)
Second, with so many clothes being made in factories with low/no quality control and with very cheap materials, most professionally made clothing is far superior to what it is sold in retail shops.
Thirdly, I often see clothes that are clearly homemade. It’s usually down to lack of skill/knowledge and using the wrong fabric for the garment.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are changes to our facial bones as we age. A face lift is lifting and resetting, but over a vastly different structure.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404279/figure/Fig2/?report=objectonly

From here.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404279/#!po=0.694444