I couldn’t be happier with my decision, and I’ve been sharing all the things: the good, the terrifying, the things I wish I’d known, and the things I’d do differently. It’s all in my facelift thread, whether you’re considering one yourself, recovering from one, or just here to read about someone else’s expensive decisions.

But there’s one particular “mistake,” if you want to call it that, that’s sending me back into surgery next week.

I didn’t share much of my original facelift on Instagram, but I’m planning to be a much better oversharer this time around. So follow along on my Instagram here. There will be stitches.

Before We Get Into It, Let Me Explain The Facelift À La Carte Menu

A facelift is rarely just a facelift.

The term is often used as a catch-all for what can actually be a combination of several different surgical procedures.

Depending on your face and what your surgeon recommends, your surgical plan might include a whole list of additional procedures beyond the deep plane face and neck lift:

• Upper blepharoplasty

• Lower blepharoplasty

• Different types of brow lifts

• Fat transfer

• Chin implant

• CO2 resurfacing

• Various types of lip lifts

Suddenly, you realize a facelift isn’t necessarily just about lifting your lower face. It can involve a whole lot more anatomy, a whole lot more procedures, and a much bigger surgical plan than you originally had in mind.

If you’re anything like me, as your surgeon starts walking you through all these additional procedures, you start to spiral. You went in wanting to fix your heavy jowls and drooping brow, and suddenly you’re contemplating surgery on practically every square inch of your face.

Not to mention the bill.

All those extras can dramatically change the price tag and, importantly, the result.

À la carte procedures can run anywhere from $5,000 to upwards of $50,000 each, depending on what you’re having done and who’s doing it. And if you’re consulting with big-name celebrity plastic surgeons like Dr. Ben Talei or Dr. Steven Levine, those extras can get expensive very quickly. At least they did during my respective consultations, where some additional procedures were quoted at around $25,000 or more apiece.

Suddenly, the à la carte menu starts looking less like a few optional upgrades and more like an entirely separate surgical bill you hadn’t mentally or financially prepared for.

But these are the very things that make the entire result look balanced and natural.

You’re not hiring a surgeon to make individual parts of your face look younger. You’re trusting their eye to make everything work together.

Which is why I always tell women during my facelift consultations to meet with at least three surgeons, prepare for each appointment, and choose someone whose skill, bedside manner, and aesthetic they trust emphatically.

Then go full monty into the surgical plan they recommend. Excellent advice, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, I was much better at giving it than taking it. So I will be in the operating room again next week.

What Was on My Facelift Menu?

Here’s what I ultimately had done:

1. Deep plane neck lift

2. Deep plane facelift

3. Temporal brow lift

4. Fat transfer

5. Chin implant

Going into surgery, there were three other procedures Dr. Mark Murphy and I had discussed that I ultimately took off my final order:

1. CO2 resurfacing

2. Upper blepharoplasty

3. Lip lift

One of the many reasons I chose Dr. Murphy was his incredible bedside manner. He’s kind, patient, and never pressured me into anything I wasn’t comfortable with.

Whenever I expressed hesitation about an additional procedure, his answer was some version of, “We can always do it later.”

Well, later is next week. I’m going back for the lip lift.

Despite all the advice I give other women to choose a surgeon they trust and then go all in on the surgical plan that surgeon recommends, I was absolutely terrified when it came time for my own surgery. The pre-surgery jitters are intense, even when you’re completely confident in your decision.

As my facelift bestie Michele Promaulayko discussed in this Allure article about my recovery, younger facelift patients in their 40s can experience more emotional anxiety around the decision than patients in their 50s, 60s, and beyond.

1000%.

Looking back, I wasn’t questioning Dr. Murphy’s recommendations. I trusted him completely. I was just overwhelmed by the idea of having so much done to my face at once.

And no matter how much research you’ve done or how confident you are in your surgeon, elective surgery is still scary. Any surgery is scary. As the date gets closer, you start questioning everything. Including decisions you felt perfectly good about just a few weeks earlier.

So I did what any perfectly rational woman having a minor existential crisis in a plastic surgeon’s office would do: I started negotiating over which parts of my face we could leave alone without compromising his overall vision.

I now talk to so many women who go through this exact same spiral in the weeks leading up to their surgery. You’ve paid the bill in full. The surgery date is approaching. There’s no backing out without a significant financial consequence. And suddenly, panic mode sets in.

One piece of advice I give every woman at this stage? Stay off Instagram in the weeks leading up to your surgery.

Seriously. Nothing good comes from spending your final days before a facelift watching strangers document their worst postoperative swelling, bruising, and complications. You’ve done your research. You’ve chosen your surgeon. You do not need the algorithm introducing you to 47 new reasons to have a nervous breakdown.

Some Extras Aren’t Really Extras

Some procedures are simply too important to the overall result to cross off the list without potentially compromising what your surgeon is trying to achieve.

In my case, Dr. Murphy did not want me removing the brow lift or fat transfer. He felt both were essential to creating balance with the changes he was making to my face and neck. And I listened.

The chin implant wasn’t necessarily a must-have, but Dr. Murphy recommended a very small one to improve my facial proportions and balance the overall result.

I am so glad I listened to him on this one.

A little internet research, and quite frankly, your own eyes, will tell you that our chins can appear to recede as we age. This is partly due to changes in the underlying bone structure, along with the loss of facial fat and changes in the surrounding soft tissue.

Dr. Murphy assured me that if I didn’t like it, we could remove it later.

I love it.

So Why Am I Going Back for a Lip Lift?

Of the three procedures I removed from my original plan, the lip lift is the one I’ve reconsidered.

If you have no idea what a lip lift is, here is a great article in Allure by , along with another one about the risks.

Lip lifts are a common addition to facial rejuvenation surgery. But I took it off my original plan because I’d seen so many freshly operated lip lifts on the internet that I’d become terrified of having an incision sitting square in the middle of my face.

My brain immediately went to: What if I don’t heal well?

Facelift scars are mostly hidden around your ears. Worst-case scenario, I figured, I have hair. I can hide them.

But under my nose? Not a whole lot of camouflage available.

Seeing how beautifully I’ve healed from my facelift has given me the confidence I didn’t have eight months ago.

And there’s a reason Dr. Murphy recommended the lip lift in the first place.

As we age, the space between the nose and upper lip tends to lengthen, and asymmetry can become more noticeable. A small lip lift can help address both.

I’d been getting teeny tiny amounts of lip filler from my amazing dermatologist, Dr. Doris Day, to correct some asymmetry in my upper lip. But filler and a lip lift do two very different things.

Filler adds volume. A lip lift actually shortens the distance between the nose and upper lip, otherwise known as the philtrum.

In my case, Dr. Murphy felt I was a good candidate for a subtle lip lift.

This isn’t about fixing something that went wrong with my facelift. It’s about addressing something I was too nervous to do the first time.

And the Two Procedures I’m Still Not Ordering

First let’s discuss my CO2 resurfacing fears. Anyone else as terrified of CO2 lasers as I am?

Instagram has done a sufficient job of literally scaring the shit out of me. I was more scared of this procedure than the facelift itself.

When I brought this fear up with Dr. Murphy’s staff, they reassured me that what I’ve seen on Instagram isn’t necessarily what I should expect. They explained that some of the more alarming results I’ve seen may involve treatments performed more aggressively than necessary, and that I’ve probably scared myself by looking at the worst examples on social media.

This is likely true.

But the fear is still there, and I’m still not doing it.

Maybe that’s another story for another day.

And the other procedure I haven’t worked up enough courage for yet is the upper blepharoplasty.

Dr. Murphy recommended removing some excess skin from my upper eyelids. I can see why, and I suspect he was right about this one, too.

The Psychological Fine Print of Facial Surgery

But here’s something I don’t think people talk about enough. There’s a psychological tipping point when you’re planning facial surgery. At some point, even the smallest additional procedure starts to feel like one change too many.

With my eyes, I was particularly nervous about changing their shape. They’re such a defining feature of your face, and I didn’t want to lose something that makes me look like me.

At this rate, I’ll likely eventually order the entire menu that Dr. Murphy suggested. I absolutely trust Dr. Murphy’s aesthetic. My facelift is proof of that. I reiterate that I am ecstatic with the results and I can’t recommend him enough. But for some reason I’m just not quite ready for the bleph.

By the way, last week’s post, Can You Afford to Blow Up Your Life?, got such a great response that I am indeed working on a few follow-up on personal finance posts next week. I’ll be tackling a few questions that keep coming up, including how to convince your husband a facelift is a good idea, how to actually save for elective surgery, and how to make the financial side of all this work.

I’ll be writing these from my Palm Beach hotel room, conveniently located next door to Dr. Murphy’s office, while recovering from my lip lift. I’ll do my best to post to my stories.

Nothing like recovering from another elective facial surgery to establish your credibility as a financial advisor on how to save for one.

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You leave the controlling narcissistic husband.

Lose 15 pounds.

Get cool, wispy, sexy bangs.

Six to twelve months later, you’re drinking a spritz in Italy with a hot new boyfriend, talking about finally choosing yourself.

Oh, and you have abs now. And all of your wrinkles have gone away. And you look hot AF.

Who doesn’t love this story? Who doesn’t want this story? It’s marketed to us everywhere. Not just by fake AI women, but in the highlight reels of real women living out their fabulous midlife reinventions all over social media.

We’ve romanticized midlife reinvention into one giant glow-up. One giant upgrade where you emerge hotter, happier and somehow with significantly better hair than you had during your entire marriage.

Because you’ve finally “chosen yourself.”

Next thing you know, you’re wandering the streets of Paris in a $2,000 outfit, drinking wine at 2 p.m. and looking pensively into the middle distance.

I’m all for it. I am really am.

I just have a few unsexy questions:

Where are you living? Can you afford the house on one income? Who paid the divorce lawyers? What happened to your health insurance?

And who exactly is financing the upkeep on your new cool, wispy, sexy bangs? The Pilates. The facials. The 10 supplements you take before breakfast? All your new clothes?

Whether you’re blowing up your entire life or just giving it a really good glow-up, there’s one part nobody seems particularly interested in romanticizing: the money

Midlife reinvention can get expensive at exactly the moment your financial life may be getting smaller.

You’re downsizing the house, the marriage, the career, maybe your entire life. Meanwhile, your fabulous new life has an entirely new cost structure.

I recently read Midlife Reinvention: Traps, Tropes, and Truths by Cheryl Wischhover, which I absolutely loved. Then I found myself reading and rereading Let’s Not Lie to Ourselves by Laura LeBleu on her Geezer Magazine Substack.

And my head started spinning about all the women I know who are somewhere in this “reinvention” phase of their lives.

Instagram makes midlife reinvention look very glamorous. It does the same thing with facelifts. You see the before and the fabulous after. You don’t see much of the messy shit in between.

The social media midlife carousels are the highlight reels of a comeback tour. You’re walking through the city streets in a chic new outfit looking like you’ve finally figured everything out. And you are “doing what I want” now.

We don’t see the pretty significant financial reckoning that can come with this midlife reinvention.

It’s something I see so many women I know struggling with quietly. As Laura LeBleu put it, Let’s Not Lie to Ourselves. Reinventing your life in midlife can be amazing. It can also be complicated, messy and really expensive.

Reinvention is expensive

I don’t just mean the beauty glow-up. The five-day trip to Korea. Pilates. Hair. New clothes. Maybe the facelift. The cool new solo apartment. And all the new shit you suddenly need because you’re finally living life on YOUR terms.

Recently, a friend in her mid-50s sat down with me because she desperately wants to quit her job and move to another country. She had no idea if she could afford to do either. Oh, and she wants to start saving for a facelift.

Another girlfriend, also in her mid-50s, is thinking about leaving her husband and wanted to know what would happen financially if she literally just left. Where would she live? What could she afford? What would her life actually look like?

Another can technically afford the life she has, she’s just no longer sure she wants to keep working this hard to pay for it. All the shit you accumulate over 25 years starts to feel less like success and more like overhead.

Different circumstances, but really they’re all asking some version of the same question: What would it actually take to change my life?

How exactly do you get from where you are now to “bigger dreams, less explaining” and “building a life that feels like yours?” The general Instagram midlife sales pitch is a little vague on the accounting.

Which is why every time I read one of these midlife glow-up stories on an Instagram carousel, I find myself thinking the same thing:

This all looks fantastic. But I’d like to see the math behind this midlife reinvention.

Did we sell the house? Are we living off savings? Was there a divorce settlement? Did we take a giant pay cut? Are we putting the reinvention on a credit card?

Sometimes the reinvention chooses you.

An unexpected divorce. A financial loss you never saw coming. A career that no longer works. Or maybe you’re just tired of working at the pace required to keep paying for a life you’re not even sure you want anymore.

And that is how helping a few girlfriends with their finances somehow turned into a financial article on a Substack that is ostensibly about beauty.

Before You Ask Why the Facelift Lady Is Giving Financial Advice, Turns Out I Have Actual Qualifications

As I sat down with my aforementioned girlfriends and helped them work through these pretty major life decisions, they both said some version of the same thing to me, “You should put this on your Substack. This is so helpful.”

So, here is a brief explanation of why anyone would take financial advice from the woman who usually writes about facelifts and the best root touch up product ever.

Before Charlotte’s Book, I had another life. I graduated from Cornell with honors in business and economics and spent nearly 15 years at JPMorgan as a top-ranked research analyst. I resigned in 2014.

Then, years later, my own financial life blew up.

At the end of my marriage, my ex-husband lost roughly 70 percent of our net worth in the span of about 24 months. I found out later. I won’t get into the actual dollar amount, but it was a lot and drastically life changing.

I was 41 and had left the corporate workforce six years earlier.

So I’ve had the slightly unusual experience of understanding money professionally and then having to completely reconfigure my own financial life. Which is exactly what I’m watching so many women around me trying to do now: figure out what a new life, will actually look like.

Mine was forced on me. In hindsight, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. At the time, it was horrific.

So, You Want to Blow Up Your Life?

The problem is, you’ve spent 20 or 30 years building the one you have. Now you have to disentangle it.

What can you afford on your own?

Are your gorgeous, high-maintenance highlights still in the budget?

What does one income afford you?

Where and how do you want to live?

I’ve found beauty maintenance gets more expensive as you get older. Gray hair. HRT. More frequent Botox. Better skincare. Apparently basic beauty maintenance comes with an operating budget that only goes up.

Of course, the most important question remains:

How are we financing the part where you’re suddenly in Positano, 15 pounds thinner, wearing really fabulous linen and having sex with an Italian man 10 years younger?

A lot of women hit midlife and find themselves in what I’ve recently started seeing referred to as “rich poor.”

Not to be confused with “fake rich.” Fake rich is living a life you could never really afford. Rich poor is having built a life you genuinely could afford, until something changes the math.

You have assets. Maybe a beautiful house. Retirement accounts. Two good incomes built the life you’re living. From the outside, you look rich.

But the house has a mortgage. The kids are expensive. Insurance is expensive. Your entire life was built around two incomes or one shared pool of money. Split that household up and suddenly the math looks very different.

So what are the next steps?

Definitely do not start your midlife reinvention with the facelift. Or the solo trip to Paris or an Eat Pray Love through Bali. Not yet at least.

And definitely do not start with a $799 midlife reinvention course.

Let me give you some actual financial advice and tell you exactly where to begin.

Before you do anything, figure out what your life actually costs

It sounds ridiculously basic.

It is also amazing how many people cannot tell you what it actually costs to run their life every month.

You cannot figure out whether you can quit your job, get divorced, move, retire earlier, invest more or blow up your entire life and move to Portugal until you know two things:

How much of my spending is truly fixed?
And: How much of it is variable?

You need to know these two numbers. Here’s exactly how to figure them out:

One quick disclaimer before we get into it: One of my girlfriends told me she was thinking about “hiring a coach” to help her. I practically screamed: PLEASE DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY. And this is another reason I wanted to write this article.

There are a lot of people online whose advice somehow leads to the shocking discovery that the answer to your problems is their $1,500 course, conveniently marked down from $2,499.

Money is not, in fact, floating around the internet waiting for you to step into your midlife feminine power and receive it. There is no masterclass here. I will not ask you to manifest abundance.

This is not a sales funnel. The only thing I’m going to try to sell you is a $9-a-month subscription to my Substack.

Now, here is the incredibly simple system I use to understand my finances: two personal credit cards. One for fixed expenses. One for variable expenses.

The fixed card is for your recurring basic living expenses. For example, your phone bill. Utilities. Rent. Homeowners insurance. Car insurance. Essential subscriptions or medications. Anything automated and basically non-negotiable month to month goes on this card.

I don’t use this card for anything else. I don’t even carry it with me. I pay the balance in full every month, so I’m not paying interest, but I am collecting frequent flyer miles.

The second credit card is for variable expenses. These are all the expenses completely under your control every month. For example: Hair appointments. Skincare. Makeup. Uber. Amazon. Restaurants. Clothes. Going out. All the random shit you buy that doesn’t seem like very much money individually and somehow becomes a horrifying number at the end of the month.

I put all of that on a separate card.

Why?

Because I want to know two numbers every month: What does it cost to maintain my life? And what am I choosing to spend?

Those are very different numbers.

Do this for three or four months and then take a long, hard look at both numbers and see where you land. Don’t judge it yet. Don’t announce that you’re never ordering Uber Eats again. Don’t start cancelling everything in a panic.

Just know your numbers: Fixed and variable. And if your life changed tomorrow, which of those numbers could you actually change? And what could you change them to?

This is where I start with anyone who asks me for help. Until you understand what’s coming in and what’s going out, everything else is noise. Planning, budgeting and investing come later. Everything starts here.

Once you know and understand these numbers, you can start asking the hard questions:

• Can I afford to leave my marriage?

• Can I actually afford to quit my job?

• Why do I look rich on paper and feel broke in real life?

• Do I still want this enormous house, or am I just working to pay for it?

• What would it cost to live the life I actually want?

• Can I afford to blow it all up and start again?

• And, importantly, are the highlights still in the budget? What about those quarterly Botox appointments?

• When can I get the facelift?

• Can I go to Korea for a glow-up without putting my reinvention on a credit card?

This post was a bit of an experiment. If practical financial advice like this is useful, tell me in the comments. I’ll keep going. Midlife is expensive and confusing enough. We might as well talk about the money too.

If this article sucked, you can tell me that as well. I’ll happily return to my regularly scheduled programming of facelifts, celebrity rants and skincare. Coming next week: how to talk to your husband about getting a facelift. See? Finance and beauty really are connected.

I know because I’m guilty of posting it myself.

I’ve posted tons of photos and written extensively about my recovery. And visually, yes, you can look pretty good surprisingly quickly. The bruises fade. The truly crazy-looking period usually only lasts a week or so. By two weeks, you can leave the house looking relatively normal. People start telling you how amazing you look and you think: Great. We’re done here.

Except you are absolutely not done.

Instagram is short-form content. VERY short-form content. And what’s much harder to show in a before-and-after carousel is that facelift recovery can linger for a long, long time.

Not necessarily in ways anyone else can see, but in your body. In your workouts. In your skincare routine. Very much in your sleep and eating habits. And very much in your sex life.

Looking recovered and actually feeling recovered are two completely different things.

I didn’t fully understand before my facelift how much healing would still be happening long after I looked presentable.

A girlfriend of mine who is a fitness trainer recently asked me about recovery. Our conversation is actually what prompted me to write this story. I realized how much Instagram content, including some of my own, makes a facelift look like two weeks of looking crazy followed by the unveiling of your fabulous new face.

It’s so, so far from that.

As I keep saying, it was all worth it. I would get my facelift again in a heartbeat. It is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. But this is major surgery. And I think social media often forgets that part.

You may look like a shiny new version of yourself two weeks later. You probably won’t feel like yourself for many, many months. Potentially longer.

Being able to answer emails, go to dinner or walk back into an office is one level of milestone. Getting back to the way you actually live, eat, sleep, have sex, is another.

Those are the things you don’t think to ask about at your consult because you’re too busy asking where the scars will be, when you’ll look “normal,” and when you can go back to work.

So, eight months later, here are the things I wish someone had told me.

Weightlifting, Yoga, and Getting Back To The Gym

This morning I was at the gym lifting weights and I thought to myself, this is the first time since February that I can really try to lift heavy weights again. I am 8 months post surgery.

To be clear, I was medically cleared to exercise much, much earlier. Dr. Mark Murphy (my amazing surgeon) knows I’m an avid yogi, and he told me no yoga until at least three months post-op. Most patients are cleared to return to the gym for light cardio around 3 to 4 weeks, and for full workouts at 6 weeks after a facelift.

And that is the key here: there is a big difference between being cleared medically to do things, but actually feeling like yourself doing them.

I got back to yoga in May, three months post-surgery. And while I felt… okay-ish, I still had a lot of neck strain and stiffness. I couldn’t do nearly as much as I could before surgery. And it wasn’t just because I’d taken three months off. There were things my body could technically do that my neck was simply not interested in doing yet.

When I turned my head in warrior poses I felt strain. I couldn’t do a wheel. Or a camel. I was slow in my motions overall and especially around my neck. I still felt a tiredness and slowness despite 12 weeks passing since surgery. I had to rest often in class.

Dr. Murphy assured me I couldn’t damage anything, but I still didn’t feel like myself. And this is all completely normal. But this is what I want anyone considering a facelift to understand: it will take a while to return to the activities that were once regular to you.

I returned to weight training around month three, but “weight training” is generous. I was lifting super light weights and constantly aware of my neck and added swelling. Any time I tried to push hard, I could feel the strain. I could feel a swell.

It’s only in the last 6 weeks that I felt comfortable really lifting to my max again.

You know that slightly deranged grunt you make when you go up a weight and are fighting through the last two reps? I couldn’t have imagined doing that a few months ago as it would have felt way too uncomfortable. It has taken this long, at least for me, to feel comfortable really pushing my body.

My girlfriend that is 3 months post surgery tells me she still feels strain picking up heavy things.

Again, this is all completely normal, and recovery can vary enormously from patient to patient.

On a side note, it’s pretty weird wearing headphones or earbuds for a while. I didn’t do that again until about May either.

Sex, Sleeping, And Other Things In Bed

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Mainstream press. Instagram comments. Blogger world. Is it even called the blogger world anymore? Wh…

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The eight-episode show is an adaptation of Julia May Jonas's bestselling debut novel of the same name playing on Netflix. It came out earlier this year, March to be exact. I wished I had known. It would have been great to binge during facelift recovery.

Rachel Weisz plays an acclaimed writer and English professor at a liberal arts college who develops an increasingly unhinged obsession with a much younger colleague named Vladimir, played by Leo Woodall.

Weisz is 56. Woodall is 29. Their characters appear to be roughly the same ages.

And I am into it.

We never learn Rachel Weisz’s character’s name. It is deliberately obscured throughout the season. She is only ever referred to as “M.”

We’ve spent decades watching middle-aged men become obsessed with much younger women. Vladimir flips the script. This time, the woman gets to lust. She gets to be inappropriate. She gets the wandering eye. The sexual fantasies.

Watching Rachel, a woman in her mid-50s, become completely consumed by her attraction to a much younger teacher is enthralling and wildly entertaining.

I love the role reversal.

I love the dialogue.

Her character is constantly talking directly to us, letting us into an inner monologue that is very sexual, candid, funny, occasionally uncomfortable and refreshingly messy.

It is all incredibly fun to watch.

There’s something particularly satisfying about watching a woman in her 50s portrayed not merely as still sexual, but absolutely consumed by desire. Vladimir basically takes up residence in her brain.

So I’m watching. I’m entertained. I’m appreciating all of this. And I’m also wondering how I completely missed the show when it came out. Apparently I slept through the entire March press tour.

Yet, somewhere along the way, I developed another obsession entirely.

I cannot stop staring at Rachel Weisz’s face.

I almost hate admitting that because I love the show so much.

And, I love Rachel Weisz so much.

Major girl crush.

About ten years ago, I saw her and Daniel Craig in a supermarket in Woodstock near my house and was genuinely starstruck. I can confirm that she is every bit as beautiful standing near the produce aisle as she is on screen.

And at 56, she remains insanely beautiful.

But as I watched Vladimir, I kept noticing her face. Not because I think she looks bad. She absolutely does not.

It’s because I remembered something.

In 2011, Rachel Weisz joined what was described as the British Anti-Cosmetic Surgery League, alongside Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet.

Yes.

A league.

Apparently being against cosmetic surgery once required organized sport.

And of course Kate Winslet was involved.

Kate has been publicly objecting to actresses messing with their faces since approximately the invention of Botox. As longtime Charlotte’s Book readers know, Kate and I have already had words about this.

Admittedly, she was not present for them.

But back to the league.

I’m not much of a joiner to begin with, but the British Anti-Cosmetic Surgery League is one organization I can confidently say would reject my application on sight.

Weisz also famously criticized Botox, arguing that it should essentially be banned for actors in the same way steroids are banned for athletes because facial expression is part of an actor’s job. Although her ads are insanely airbrushed they have gotten banned in some countries.

These are pretty definitive positions on the topic.

And now, 15 years later, I’m watching Vladimir thinking:

Has Rachel left the league?

To be very clear, I have no idea what Rachel Weisz has or hasn’t done to her face. Unless Rachel sends me her treatment history, neither does anyone else looking at photographs on the internet.

But I spend an arguably unhealthy amount of time looking at celebrity faces, talking to cosmetic dermatologists and plastic surgeons, and writing about facial aging. I grew up on Star magazine and spent my 20s watching Joan Rivers’ Fashion Police. Analyzing celebrity choices is basically my favorite pastime, except now I interview doctors and call it research.

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Almost 10 years ago, when I was first starting Charlotte’s Book, Dr. Shereene Idriss wrote this article for me. I came across it recently and realized something: the advice still holds up. Really well.

A huge shoutout to Dr. Shereene Idriss, who worked with me in those very early Charlotte’s Book days. She was brilliant then, she’s brilliant now, and I’m incredibly grateful to all the doctors who took a chance on my little platform before anyone really knew what it was.

Back then, Charlotte’s Book grew into a full-fledged beauty website. Then life twisted a bit. I dropped the ball. And now I’m back on Substack. But through all of it, I kept that content alive and well.

Ten years later, after writing endlessly about aging and eventually getting a facelift myself (Allure documented it), I’ve now actually experienced what Shereene was describing. Her analogy is evergreen, incredibly accurate and, at this point, strangely personal.

Yeah. Your face is basically a couch, just like Shereene said. I like to think that mine is at least a really expensive B&B Italia couch. But it ages like one nonetheless.

Good intel like this doesn’t need to be reinvented, and this article is just as accurate today as it was 10 years ago. Smart and thoughtful cosmetic doctors explain what is actually happening to your face so you can make smarter decisions about what, if anything, you want to do about it.

So here it is again, from the Charlotte’s Book archives, written by Dr. Shereene Idriss. Originally published October 22, 2017. Republished below and unpaywalled for your reading pleasure. Ten years later, the article is holding up beautifully. Unlike my jawline, which required professional assistance.

The Couch Analogy

To keep it simple (or, as simple as can be) let’s compare your face to a couch: you first start by noticing a small stain (note to self: avoid red wine when hosting parties), which can be lightened to appear invisible.

With time, that stain becomes more prominent as others appear around it, making the fabric appear discolored. Then, one day, you notice the fabric isn’t as firm as it used to be, having lost its elasticity in some areas.

Upon further inspection, your once plump and heavenly cushions have become saggy and sunken, exposing parts of the sofa’s skeleton. And then, the final stage, the last mortal blow, is the day you attempt to sit on your couch and the sturdy framework that lent you faithful support all of those years, finally gives in and crumbles.

This, my friends, is your face in a nutshell.

The Reveal

The fabric is your skin, revealing the earliest evidence of aging through discoloration. The plump cushions can be likened to your once youthful cheeks made up of all of the underlying glorious muscle and fat.

And, the framework, the pièce de resistance holding it all together, is your facial skeleton.

Like any chronic process, you don’t fully appreciate the changes of your facial skeleton until they are quite advanced. Minimal changes in your framework are masked through time by the superficial cushioning of your facial muscles and fat pads, until redistribution and loss reveal a frail structure.

A Closer Look: Bone Loss

The implications of facial bone loss on the aging face are crucial to understand in order to restore a natural youthful appearance.

By early adulthood, maximum bone density is achieved in both men and women. As we approach our early 30s, bone density begins to experience a gradual rate of decline. Unfortunately, women tend to undergo a more significant decrease in facial bone volume starting at a younger age, hence lending credence to the universal truth of women aging faster than men.

Four main areas undergo change resulting in dramatic repercussions:

1. The orbital rim (aka eye socket) widens, particularly along the outer inferior edges, giving your eyes a more sunken appearance with more prominent fat pads resulting in a tired look.

2. The mid-face recedes, softening support to overlying structures.

3. The nasal cartilage separates, lengthening the nose and dropping the nasal tip.

4. The mandible (aka jawline) retracts, unveiling jowls and an unstructured neck. All of this happens almost simultaneously, like a carefully orchestrated attack on your youth. The facial muscles and fat pads decrease in volume, while the casing holding them together (the superficial muscular aponeurotic system aka SMAS) loses its elasticity, culminating in a true domino effect. From the top down, your temples appear more sunken lending way to the formation of heavy pads beneath your eyes, followed by strong folds around your mouth, weighing down the corners of your lips resulting in jowls along your jawline and the appearance of a saggy neck.

Knowledge Is Power

With this understanding, you are now better equipped to understand your options when considering cosmetic work.

If your goal is to age gracefully, quick fixes are not your solution. For example, avoid cheek implants as you will only continue to age around them—and trust me, this is not a good look.

Likewise, filling the folds around your mouth with injectables will only result in the dreaded “muzzle” look. The answer, my friends, is “maintenance” through regular use of a thorough toolkit that should include daily basics such as SPF and antioxidants to periodic treatments with lasers, ultrasound, LEDs, fillers and neuromodulators. 

What it boils down to is strengthening your foundation through many little interventions along your journey through life. Like that sofa, our skin will inevitably age, but there is a lot you can do to delay the inevitable and embrace it gracefully.

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I brought in fashion writer Christine Morrison, author of Clothes Minded (no affiliate link) and Writing in Black and White for an actual expert opinion on why people are paying an insane amount of money to wear someone else’s logo on their head.

So the article wasn’t just a rant. There was journalism involved.

I called the series The Price Is Wrong. Since that article performed relatively well, welcome to installment number two.

I am deeply into spending money wisely, probably because I spent most of my former life working in finance. And there is a particular category of wildly overpriced items that makes something in my former Wall Street brain short-circuit.

To be clear, The Price Is Wrong isn’t about expensive things. I love many expensive things. It’s about expensive things that are terrible uses of money and what to buy instead.

Which brings me to today’s offender.

As summer comes to a close in the U.S., I would like to formally nominate one purse for permanent retirement: The YSL Icare raffia tote priced at $5,300.

Somehow, through the sheer force of influencers, celebrities and approximately 4,000 articles telling us what “chic girls” were carrying this summer, this thing became the bag.

Nothing makes me question whether something is actually chic faster than being repeatedly told that chic people are wearing it.

After this season, I hope it never rears its overpriced, impractical straw head again.

So before I start yelling about the price, and then show you what Christine and I think you should spend your money on instead, let’s discuss the actual bag.

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I even had a group chat with friends dedicated to analyzing ears. All we did was search for detectable signs of an incision and inspect the stitch work.

I did this f…

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Two weeks ago, I published Meet All the Middle Aged Women Who Don’t Exist. Since then, it has taken on a life of its own. As I write this, it’s racked up more than 4,700 likes, 871 restacks, 1,700 shares, and over 750 comments.

It quickly became a kind of public service announcement being passed from friend to friend: Be careful. These women may not even exist.

Even medical professionals have started sharing the article. proclaimed “every women over 40 needs to read this.” I don't think I could ask for a better compliment.

There was one small win, too. “Isabelle Santos,” the AI influencer I highlighted in my article, has been taken down by instagram. Hooray!

Unfortunately she is still alive and well on Facebook where her latest post invites people to comment "REAL" to receive her glow-up guide. The soundtrack? Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.”

At this point, the joke is writing itself. I couldn't write satire this good.

If you come across these AI accounts, keep reporting them. One report won't change much, but thousands might. Once you learn to spot them, you start seeing them everywhere.

I thought I’d just written an article about AI-generated women duping middle aged women into buying supplements. It turns out I'd accidentally started a much bigger conversation. One about authenticity, beauty, trust, AI... and what social media has quietly become.

A few days after my article was published, The New York Times reported on AI-generated supplement scams affecting all ages and sexes. Jia Tolentino also published a brilliant essay in The New Yorker about the increasingly artificial world of beauty, Instagram Face, facelifts, algorithms, and what happens when the face itself starts to separate from the actual person.

The conversation around AI-generated women and the increasingly artificial world of beauty is becoming more fascinating, more complicated, and frankly, very disturbing. What happens when we can no longer tell what's real?

“Wow, this is terrifying. But also, I guess, not surprising”… said.

I did what any Substack writer would do, this past week I spent an embarrassingly long time reading all 700 comments. Somewhere between comment #286 and #493, I realized this article wasn’t really about AI women anymore. I found something much more interesting and I’ll do my best to sum it up here.

It’s not about the artificial women. It’s their artificial life that hurts.

We already accept that magazines are now using AI models and Hollywood has AI actresses like Tilly Norwood scoring roles. We know commercials use actors. We understand that advertising isn’t real life.

One reader defiantly asked: “How is this any different from using actors in a commercial?”

It’s a fair question. But I think the difference is that we all know the person in a TV commercial is playing a role. These AI women aren’t presented as actresses. They’re presented as your friend. Your peer.

That’s a very different kind of persuasion than just a fake beauty image. And judging by the comments...That’s the part that made people the most angry. This is so much more. Someone who’s supposedly lived your life, solved your problem, and is generously “sharing” what worked.

As wrote,”If we reach a point where we no longer know whether the woman sharing her story is real, whether the photograph is real, whether the recommendation comes from lived experience or a carefully engineered algorithm, something precious is lost.”

added, “my biggest fear with the integration of AI. It’s not that we might start trusting the fake things, it’s that we will stop recognizing and trusting the real things.

Confidence scams have always worked the same way. They don’t start by asking for your money. They start by earning your trust. They tell you a story that feels familiar. They make you believe they’re just like you.

Only then do they sell you the miracle. That predatory nature of Isabelle and her friends is what outraged readers the most.

We Miss When Social Media Was Actually Social (And Not One Giant Sales Funnel)

While outrage over the army of AI-generated wellness women dominated the comments, an even bigger frustration emerged: people are simply exhausted by what social media has become. One reader described it as a “simulated reality” where nothing feels real anymore. Many others said they were ready to delete Instagram altogether.

Ironically, today Meta was ordered to pay $942 million after finding the company failed to adequately protect children on its platforms. Children absolutely deserve protection. I’d argue adults need a little protecting too.

To me, social media has just become QVC with better lighting.

What happened to the instagram where people just shared photos of their dog, their holiday, and an occasional blurry meal instead of funneling you into a seven-figure business course... or an Amazon Glow-Up Guide? put it simply that she is just “tired of being sold to” at every turn.

There is a general exhaustive feeling that every post, carousel, or reel is trying to sell, sell, sell. said “marketing has always been a dishonest trade but never so much as today.”

And it isn’t just beauty. It’s wellness. Productivity. Business coaching. Parenting. Dating. Apparently everyone woke up one morning and became an expert in everything. Everyone has a course. Everyone has a secret. Everyone has a link in bio. Social media has become an endless parade of hooks, Canva carousels, AI-generated slop, and sales funnels.

The mental gymnastics required to consume social media is becoming too much. And now we have to worry about AI women. Is this person AI? Is this an affiliate link? Is this person actually qualified? Does she even exist? Is it an AI clone?

People want a real mistake, a real conversation, a real face, a real expert. But it’s becoming nearly impossible to filter through it. detailed a moment watching her friend post every photo with a Snapchat beauty filter. “Every one. The face on her phone barely looked like the woman standing next to me.”

AI Is Pouring Gasoline on the Beauty Wars

If there’s one debate that can reliably start a civil war in the comments section of any beauty article, it’s this one: Should we age naturally? Or should we fight it?

This article on AI women was no exception.

There was a collective relief in the comments of intelligent women discovering they weren’t comparing themselves to real people. While most readers agreed they’d been fooled by Isabelle and her fictional friends, the comments did split into two camps and it gave me a lot to chew on mentally.

One side argued that if we were fooled by Isabelle in the first place, maybe that was the bigger problem. Maybe we’d become so willing to believe in miracle peptides, miracle creams, and miracle supplements that we wanted the fantasy to be true.

A few readers were basically saying:

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But the biggest mistake I see people make is spending months, sometimes even years, researching surgeons...and almost no time preparing for recovery.

Which is strange, because recovery is where you'll actually spend your time. The surgery itself lasts half a day. Recovery lasts weeks. Healing lasts months. A little planning beforehand can make those first few weeks dramatically easier.

The first 7 to 10 days of facelift recovery are a complete mindf*ck.

Your surgeon will do an excellent job explaining the medical side of recovery. They'll tell you which medications to stop, when to ice, when to shower, when to come back for your follow-up appointments. The care I received from my surgeon, his team, and my recovery nurse was exceptional. But the healing journey is far from easy.

There are plenty of recovery hacks that can make your post-op experience smoother. The less you’re scrambling to order a wedge pillow, the right face wash, or a baby spoon, the more energy you have to simply rest, both mentally and physically.

Those seemingly random purchases ended up making such a difference.

And thank goodness for Valium. Seriously. Put it on the shopping list. 😂 Recovery is really about reducing stress before it even begins.

Before we get into all the things I think you should buy before a facelift, I want to spend the first part of this Substack article talking about the one purchase that never made the list because, unfortunately, Amazon doesn't sell her: a recovery nurse.

You can't Prime one to your hotel room at 2:00 a.m. after you've decided you need her. By then, the moment has passed.

Let's dig into recovery nurse economics.

Every facelift has hidden costs. This is the biggest. In my opinion, it’s the smartest place to spend money. Here's exactly what I spent, why I extended my nursing care, what I'd do differently, what Olivia DeFilippo (my nurse) recommends, and why I think there's a magic number when it comes to recovery support.

Then we'll dive into the over-researched Amazon rabbit hole I went down on your behalf. If you’ve been reading Charlotte’s Book for a while, you already know I have an unhealthy obsession with ridiculously good Amazon finds. Facelift recovery was no exception. I probably spent as much time researching recovery products as I did researching surgeons.

By the time surgery rolled around, my hotel room looked like an Amazon fulfillment center. While I do discuss several key items in this article, I also co-created a 29 things you need to make your recovery smoother guide. I had to plug it. Emily Wagner and I worked hard on it.

How Much Should You Spend On A Recovery Nurse?

Initially, I was only planning to hire a recovery nurse for the first 24 hours. Most offices, including Dr. Mark Murphy's, require about 18 hours of nursing care, so I thought, "Twenty-four hours should be plenty." I was wrong.

Expect costs to range from $100 an hour to $250 an hour. I originally booked Olivia for 24 hours at a cost of $2,400.

As surgery day got closer and my panic level steadily escalated, I increased 24 hours to 39 hours. I wanted to make sure I had coverage for two full nights. It was expected I would emerge from surgery around 4:00pm, 39 hours would get me just that.

Olivia, who was also in the operating room with me, escorted me from surgery back to my hotel. I honestly don't remember much of it. She somehow got me into bed and the next morning took me back to Dr. Murphy at 7:00am to get my bandages off.

She also became my designated photographer because I refused to open my eyes for the first three days, and then refused to look in a mirror for another five days. At my instruction, Olivia kindly documented what was going down, which is why my eyes are closed in all of these photos.

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Normally I’m writing about facelifts, peptides, celebrity faces, and the psychological warfare that is aging. But recently I’ve developed an irrational fixation on certain luxury fashion items that I simply cannot stop thinking about.

Not because I love them. Quite the opposite. I despise…

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However, it’s also not where I expected to find myself a few years ago.

This week, my facelift journey officially made it into Allure.

My good girlfriend Michele Promaulayko, who writes for both Allure and Charlotte’s Book, published a piece called “I Spent a Week As My Friend’s Facelift…

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So yes. Potentially six to eight straight weeks of grey root buildup and a growing zebra stripe down the middle of your head.

To be extra safe, because I am wildly paranoid and wanted to risk absolutely nothing, I stopped coloring my hair two weeks before surgery and waited a full eight weeks post-op to start again. Ten straight weeks of grey roots was in stark contrast to my freshly lifted face. Thank God for chic vintage headscarves, Yankee baseball caps, and a great (yet gentle) root touch-up product.

During this incredibly glamorous chapter of my life (photos follow down below), I became mildly psychotic about finding a good root cover product and basically ordered every option I could find.

Prior to surgery, I had been using the Oribe root touch up spray that everyone loves and recommends. Walk into any beauty store and it’s treated like a root touch-up gift from God. I genuinely do not understand the hype. It only comes in two shades, and I personally find aerosol root sprays messy, inaccurate, and annoying to apply. Rita Hazan’s root touch-up spray is also a cult favorite, and I feel exactly the same way about that one too. No bueno.

I wanted something gentle, easy to control, and honestly something that matched my roots better. More importantly, I wanted something I could apply with precision around my incision lines without feeling like I was spray painting my scalp.

Then I found the holy grail. And what I find especially interesting is that after trying roughly ten different products, this one was on absolutely nobody’s “best of” lists. InStyle recently “tested” root cover products and somehow this wasn’t included anywhere. I suspect because it doesn’t advertise with them? This exact dynamic is exactly why traditional beauty media is slowly dying. Anyway. I digress.

Then I came across this incredibly magical little product. And yes, post-op photos ahead.

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I wear that badge proudly.

Could I have used the $5K on more treatments instead? Sure. But instead, I spent it working up enough courage to go under the knife and making sure I was making the right decision. And honestly? I learned a lot.

Is it moderately borderline psychopathic? Maybe.

I am an obsessive researcher by nature. On everything. Maybe that comes from my former life as a top-ranked Wall Street analyst at JPMorgan, where my entire job was essentially deep research and trying to avoid very, very expensive mistakes on the order of tens of millions everyday. Or maybe it came from the sheer anxiety of making a permanent decision about my face. Likely both.

Either way, I went D-E-E-P.

And judging by the volume of emails, DMs, and group chats, many of you are in deep as well. What started as me casually sharing my own experience somehow turned into a full-blown facelift thread. Many women I know are facelift-curious and overwhelmed. They don’t know how to choose a surgeon. They don’t know what questions to ask. And perhaps most importantly, they don’t know how much of what they are seeing online is real. In my humble opinion, so much of it is sugar coated and wildly misleading.

So, after an almost absurd number of consults, countless hours of research, and now having actually gone through the surgery and recovery myself, I wanted to start packaging some of this information together in a more useful way.

After seeing 11 surgeons in person, plus two international consults, the biggest takeaway is this: there are a lot of great doctors at all price points, and many have completely different opinions. You could meet ten “top” surgeons and get many different recommendations, plans, and vibes. The challenge isn’t just finding a good doctor. It’s finding the one who understands your goals, your psychology, your tolerance for the process, all within the budget that you think is appropriate to spend.

Choosing someone to operate on your face is terrifying as is paying the bill in full. Ouch. The price of a facelift seems to be going up rapidly. Some of the doctors I consulted with only 6 months ago are now double in price. All that said, I could not be happier to be on the other side of it. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.

There is so, so much information I want to share from these consults that it simply doesn’t fit cleanly into Substack articles. And more importantly, a lot of what I learned isn’t really written anywhere. I went into the dark depths of Instagram and YouTube, and I genuinely feel like I have a different perspective and value add than what is currently out there.

I am hoping to package up this information in a useful way. For my inaugural guide, I teamed up with my girlfriend Emily Wagner of GroomedLA was also having one. Literally the same week.

She’s also a-New Yorker that relocated to Los Angeles, which is probably why we get along. We chose two completely different surgeons, and we are both ecstatic with our results. We also chose very different recovery paths. I went full rest-and-Valium mode. Emily went full hyperbaric chamber and every recovery extra imaginable. I’m 48 and Emily is 60. She also felt like she had too much information not to share.

Because both of us were getting bombarded with questions, we decided to move forward with this collaborative content initiative aptly called The Girlfriend Guides, co-authored by both of us and includes everything we learned from the consult process.

These are practical, no bullshit, fully transparent guides designed to save you time, money, stress, and hopefully a few emotional spirals. If you like them, more to come…

These are not medical guides. And they are definitely not “best doctors” lists. They are practical guides about choosing a doctor, navigating consults, managing expectations, and understanding the emotional and psychological side of all of this.

So if you do purchase a guide, let me know what you think! Now, because so many of you have asked, here is the full list of surgeons I consulted with. You already know about Dr. Ben Talei and Dr. Steven Levine, and that I ultimately chose Dr. Mark Murphy to perform my surgery. Below is the full rundown. All excellent doctors at the top of their game. And if you have questions, leave them in the comments, DM me, or email me.

The Consults

I started with

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During the April 29 episode (my first time watching this podcast… and wow, tough viewing), in a very orchestrated interview, the mighty momager made it very clear she loves her $400,000 facelift and her surgeon.

I watched the whole episode so you don’t have to, because it will actively lower your IQ. And after having a facelift 12 weeks ago, I feel very qualified to weigh in. My group chats and DMs have been blowing up with “what do you think of this?” so this felt worth breaking down.

I believe a large part of this facelift media circus is the swelling honeymoon period (which I’ll break down day by day below after just going through it myself), but let’s not pretend Photoshop, Facetune, and ring lights aren’t doing a massive amount of heavy lifting here.

In my former life, I also had an intimate dinner with Kim Kardashian and saw firsthand the lighting, media, and Photoshop circus likely contributing to all of this.

I have thoughts. Many of them.

But Before We Start, Kris’ Facelift Is Great

Before I dive into the swelling honeymoon period, lighting, and everything else, I want to say this clearly: for anyone, and especially surgeons on Instagram claiming her facelift is “slipping” and publicly critiquing the technique, that is wildly unprofessional and should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

If you are following, consulting with, or considering surgery with someone posting videos breaking down why Kris Jenner’s facelift is “bad,” I would seriously reconsider. No reputable, high quality surgeon would do this. That is not expertise. That is marketing. And not the good kind.

Kris Jenner looks amazing. I wrote about it. It’s gorgeous. It’s a great facelift. And while I personally didn’t have a great consult with that doctor, there is no doubt his work is great.

Ok. Let’s keep going.

Photoshop, lighting, etc.

I’m honestly confused why more people aren’t talking about this and just discussing the facelift technique? Are we not all smarter than this by now?

So, if you watch Kris Jenner’s facelift defense episode, the podcast is almost unwatchably contrived. The commentary feels “creatively innocent” as she talks about “minding my own business” while attending Lauren Sánchez’s party. Poor Kris was dragged into a facelift media storm.

I am absolutely sure Lauren Sánchez’s parties are famously private among celebrity circles. Completely devoid of photographers, special lighting, and photo editors. That is obviously why Kris went. The first “viral” photos came out of that event, and those same images are now being treated as the final result.

Not only was Kris’s face still likely in the early healing stages, where even light swelling can make your face look unusually smooth and lineless, but are we also meant to believe her team did not edit those images within an inch of their lives? The idea that these photos are organic and untouched is about as believable as saying Bradley Cooper didn’t get an upper bleph or that Demi Moore never had a facelift.

If you do decide to watch this mind-numbing episode, fast forward to around the 21 minute mark. Kris very sweetly explains this sticky situation that brought unwanted attention to her facelift. It’s semi hilarious to watch these words come from the momager of a family whose entire existence is being photographed, filmed, edited, and distributed globally. Their literal business model is being seen, filmed, lit, posted, and analyzed. And now we are pretending post-facelift photos from a major event just… appeared? That she was somehow swept up in it all?

My take? Kris was likely in that post-facelift high, loved how she looked (I get it, it’s intoxicating), and wanted those photos—**which were also clearly edited—**out immediately. I actually briefly touch upon this dynamic in the Facelift Consult Guide when looking at before and after images.

I have sat at an intimate birthday dinner with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West about eight-ish years ago. This was not a press event. A real dinner with real friends. And even there, the photos went from phone to editor before they were ever posted. No raw image. Ever. I am always surprised how many people still think “candid” means unedited. It doesn’t.

I now live half the year in Australia, which I can confidently say is the influencer and fake lighting capital of the world. Until I lived here, I did not fully appreciate how manipulated images are. Now I see people in person all the time and think, this is not how you look in real life. Influencers carry ring lights around like their Rhode Lip Tint. It’s always in their purse. I am not kidding.

You know what I would actually love? If Kris Jenner posted real before and after medical photos the way Denise Richards did. That would be honesty. What we’re seeing now is not honesty. It’s presentation. And, quite honestly, a little bit of gaslighting powered by image manipulation and the internet happily eating it up.

Now, let’s move on to more highbrow topics: the swelling honeymoon period and how to actually align your aesthetic with your doctor.

The Honeymoon Swelling Period

What you are likely seeing is absolutely not a failed facelift. It is healing. It is settling. It is the slow exit from what I call, and what many doctors call, the swelling honeymoon period — aka what I fondly refer to as the “I look 19 again” phase.

Yes, there is a brutal phase right after surgery where you look completely insane.

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I certainly did not think I’d ever be someone seriously considering a facelift. That was for other people. Richer people. …

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This new era of celebrities actually admitting what they’ve done feels… refreshing. Long overdue, frankly. More of that, please. Maybe Demi Moore will finally come clean? Please Demi. I implore you.

What makes Denise Richard’s facelift story even more interesting for me is that I recently sat in a consult with her surgeon. And I learned so much.

YES, I SAT IN HIS CHAIR

I actually had a consult with Dr. Ben Talei late last year when I was deciding who to use for my own facelift.

I can truly honestly say that Dr. Ben Talei was one of the best consults I had (and remember I had 12 of them). I also say that having met with some very expensive, very well-known celebrity doctors, including Kris Jenner’s surgeon.

The experience is not always what you would expect. I personally expect a lot. When you are paying $500 or more for a consult and they are expecting you to pay potentially hundreds of thousands for surgery. I want a deep dive. I assume you are getting a deep, thoughtful analysis of your face. That is not always the case.

Before I even stepped into Dr. Talei’s office, his team asked me to submit not just current photos of every angle, but photos of my younger self. That alone told me a lot about how he thinks.

I DID MY HOMEWORK (OBSESSIVELY)

During my facelift journey, I consulted with 12 surgeons. Yes, 12. Across New York, Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, Dallas, and even South Korea. Many readers have been asking me to put together a pros and cons list of all. It’s a great idea. If you have specific questions or requests, leave them in the comments or email me.

Photos, details, all the juicy stuff. It’s coming. Soon I’ll be sharing my pre-facelift nutrition protocol that the wonderful Jennifer Hanway walked me through.

But given all the conversation around Denise’s result, I wanted to add some real, firsthand perspective from my consult with her surgeon.

Also, I’ll admit it, I love chiming in on celebrity gossip… especially when I actually have something useful to say.

THE CONSULT

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I am taking a quick break from facelift content and celebrity chatter for a quick and unglamorous non-luxury product tip.

I’ve tried every lip product from the iconic (but honestly kind of foul-smelling) Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream my mother used, the standard Aquaphor tube that every dermatologist on planet earth recommends, to Glossier Balm Dot Com (I remain completely baffled why everyone likes this?) In addition to every lip balm I have tried every lip scrub from La Mer to Tatcha.

And the BEST product, while not glamorous and with objectively ugly packaging, that works absolute magic on lips: baby diaper rash cream. Otherwise known as panthenol, or provitamin B5. I purchased it on Amazon for $16 and use a tiny amount at night before bed.

I originally bought it during this past brutal New York winter while I was upstate recovering from my facelift. There were lots of long walks in the cold, very dry air, and my lips were wrecked. Luckily my jawline was looking snatched. More on that to come.

The “celebrity cult product” commonly associated with the ingredient panthenol is

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Something strange has happened in the last 6 months sinc…

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