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