Over time, beauty peaks - for women between 20 and 35, for men a little older. If we could plot beauty on a graph, it would form a curve which rises, plateaus for a period, then falls rapidly. The area under the curve is a measure of how much facial beauty a woman has during her lifetime.

If, when young, you have cosmetic surgery to look prettier, your beauty will peak higher. If, when older, you have cosmetic surgery to look younger, your beauty plateau will last longer. Either way, you have access to more beauty. Some women have cosmetic surgery in both phases of life.

The older you are the quicker it goes

Our faces clock runs faster the older we get. More visible aging occurs between 50 and 55, than say, between 20 and 25. And from 70 on, the face ages rapidly.

We also seem to "age-spurt". We all know that children have growth-spurts, suddenly outgrowing a pair of shoes or jeans. We believe aging occurs this way too. Many of our patients speak of seeing themselves in the mirror and feeling shocked at how much they have aged since they last looked.

Good news / bad news / good news

The good news is that cosmetic surgery can turn the face-clock back five or ten years. Perhaps you can even look fifteen years younger if you have the right combination of genes, a talented plastic surgeon, and you endorse him to do everything he has to offer.

The bad news is that, even after cosmetic surgery, the face-clock continues to run at ever-increasing speed. At age 57, with cosmetic surgery, you might look 45, but your face-clock continues to run at the speed of a 57 year old. So, in a sense if you have cosmetic surgery relatively young, it seems to last longer than if you hesitate until you are older.

There is another piece of good news. After cosmetic surgery, regardless of your age when you have it, you will always look younger than if you had not had it done.

When should I have cosmetic surgery?

The time to have cosmetic surgery is when your face is ready, not when you reach a certain age. One of our patients who loves stage plays put it this way. She said, "Tell your patients the time to have cosmetic surgery is when the play is worth the price of the ticket." Good advice. She meant, of course, when the gain in beauty is worth the cost — in terms of money, time off, risk and what your friends might say.

"I want to look prettier. Am I too young for cosmetic surgery?" Rather than our answering it, we ask you the question. Are you old enough, for instance, to emotionally handle the changes of a prettier nose or the stronger chin? Physically, one needs to be full-grown and, emotionally, one needs to be at least sixteen or seventeen. So some thirty year olds might be emotionally too young, yet some fifteen year olds are old enough.

"Am I old enough to look younger?" It's not how old you are as much as it is how old you look. So, to answer, our surgeon would touch his hands to your face and show you what we could do. Then perhaps show you on the computer imager. Then we would ask you whether the improvement is worth it to you. If so… you're old enough.

Some ask, "Am I too old?" Again, we ask it back to you, "Are you?" "Of course not", snaps an eighty year old. She's right. "Well, I'm probably just too old", muses a sixty year old. She's right too. Age indeed matters, but not the number of your candles. Rather, what matters is how old you look in contrast to how young you feel inside.

Harvey W. Austin, MD
Box 1470
Berlin MD 21811
email: h.austin@mchsi.com