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

Question

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?

In: 4690

Answer 1

Skin is not just skin. Underneath it are fat and connective tissue, whose properties deteriorate with age. Facelifts only fix the sagging part of older skin, not rejuvenate its properties underneath. I’d like to think of it this way. Youth is associated with fat. Hence the term “baby fats”. As we grow older these fat deposits thin out, their distribution differs, and at some point, old skin isn’t gonna look like younger people skin no matter how you stretch it.