Allure Just Wrote About My Facelift

A sentence that would have absolutely horrified me five years ago

Well, this is fun, exciting, and admittedly very on-brand these days.

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 Nurse. Here’s What No One Tells You.” It follows her journey as my facelift bestie, covering parts of my surgery, recovery, surgeon search, consultation process, before-and-after photos, and enough quotes from me that I’ve apparently become an unofficial spokesperson for aggressively researching cosmetic procedures.

It also documents what happens when you volunteer to spend a week caring for a swollen, medicated friend who just had her face pulled tighter.

I am so happy to publicly share all of this information with Allure and, to be honest, it’s slightly surreal because if you had asked me five years ago whether I would one day be discussing my facelift in a national beauty magazine, I would have laughed and changed the subject.

A facelift? Not me. Not ever.

And sharing this level of intimate detail? Definitely not.

Yet here we are.

Photos of my swollen five-day post-op face are now living on the internet forever. Michele also generously included my commentary on needing a recovery nurse to pull my pants down for me so I could sit on the toilet. I approved it all, of course, and even asked for it to be included.

Apparently this is the level of transparency I have reached. And I am good with it. Actually, I am GREAT with it.

Here is one of my glamorous post-surgery photos, one of many I share in Allure. I’ll also continue to share more here. I have had a lot of requests to share more incision photos. Coming soon.

I didn’t set out to become the facelift friend, dare I say facelift pusher. I wasn’t trying to build a content strategy around surgery. I certainly wasn’t trying to end up in Allure with my sutures and distorted post-op face on display.

And yet, somehow, I have found myself squarely in the middle of the facelift debate currently dividing beauty writers, feminists, celebrities, dermatologists, plastic surgeons, and group chats full of women over 45.

The Facelift Wars Are Hot

Apparently Kate Winslet and I are now on opposite sides of the facelift debate. Beauty writers of every age are writing about the mental battle of watching your face age and ultimately deciding whether to go under the knife.

After spending roughly $5,000 on consultations and meeting with 13 surgeons, I learned a thing or two.

I wasn’t a top-ranked Wall Street analyst for 15 years without developing a serious research habit.

And apparently I wasn’t alone.

Facelifts have quietly become one of the hottest topics in beauty. Actually, they’ve moved beyond beauty and become a broader cultural conversation as cosmetic surgery becomes more normalized every day.

Should we embrace our faces exactly as they are or take advantage of the remarkable technology now available to us? It’s not a new conversation, but it has become much more public.

In response to Bethenny Frankel walking the Sports Illustrated runway last month, Allure contributor Danielle Pergament recently asked, “So, When Exactly Can We Stop Being Hot?” and wrote about the exhaustion many women feel around extending their hotness years.

Interestingly, I had the opposite reaction. Please extend my hotness years as long as possible.

Women have more options than ever before: Better surgery. Better skincare. Better hormone treatments. Better information. More transparency. And personally, I think that’s amazing.

Even Gloria Steinem had a lower blepharoplasty, although she later regretted it. Maybe because she didn’t go to the right surgeon. Bradley Cooper probably regrets his upper bleph too, but only because the result wasn’t great.

Now, four months post-op, I can tell you that getting a facelift at age 48 was one of the best decisions I’ve made. I am now a big believer in getting it done early, even though some surgeons tried to convince me otherwise.

Recently, the gorgeous Trish McEvoy admitted to having a facelift at age 47 by Dr. Sherrell Aston. She is now 76 and she looks great. I’ll have whatever she’s having. And thanks for being so honest, Trish. I wish Demi would follow your lead.

Life comes at you fast, as Ferris Bueller said. And all of a sudden I am staring down 50. How did this happen? I am so glad I made the decision to do this now. It was certainly a better decision than my first marriage.

The first 10-20 days post surgery are a blur of Valium, sleeping upright, and wondering if you’ve permanently ruined your face. Then the next 90 days fly by. And today at 4 months post surgery I’d say I’m about 95% healed. Most of the feeling has returned. My neck is still a little stiff, but otherwise I feel fantastic.

Get A Facelift Friend

A good friend of mine went under the knife this week. She was firmly in the “I’d never get a facelift” camp until she watched my experience unfold.

Now I spend part of every day acting as her unofficial recovery coach.

So much so that I think I should hire myself out for this.

Kidding. Not kidding.

Which brings me to perhaps my biggest piece of advice: get a facelift buddy. Get a Michele.

If it’s available to you, get a facelift buddy for your recovery period and then tell your husband, partner, kids, or anyone else in your household to leave town. Or better yet, escape to Palm Beach for two weeks with a gal pal and come back with a new face and a new lease on life.

Someone who can reassure you that you’re not dying, you’re not botched, and that your face will not look insane forever. Even if it’s just a good friend you FaceTime every day for pep talks, prepare them ahead of time and tell them: “Congratulations. You are now my emotional support human for the next 10 days.”

You’re going to need it and it’s invaluable.

Get My Guide

There continues to be a massive gap between the information surgeons provide, the information patients actually want, and the heavily filtered version of reality presented on Instagram.

Consults are expensive. Aging kind of sucks. Information is fragmented. And the questions women ask each other privately are often far more useful than what we hear publicly or see on social media.

And because so many women started asking me the same questions over and over again, I eventually created the Facelift Consult Guide with my friend Emily Wagner, who also had a facelift recently.

It’s essentially the guide I wish someone had handed me before I spent thousands of dollars figuring all of this out myself.

For anyone new here because of the Allure article, welcome. I write about much more than facelifts, although admittedly the topic has consumed the better part of the last two years of my life.

On Charlotte’s Book you’ll find:

• No BS, all-transparency.

• Facelifts, aesthetics, beauty treatments, and the psychology of aging.

• Two-minute quick tips that save you time and money.

• Celebrity commentary, cultural rabbit holes, and the occasional deep dive into why beautiful people make questionable decisions. For example, I hate Jennifer Aniston’s new boyfriend and here is a deep analysis of Kris Jenner’s honeymoon swelling period.

• Expert nutritionists that weigh in on topics like the ugly side of peptides.

• Divorce, dating, reinvention, and figuring out life after your original plan falls apart.

For everyone who has been following along, thank you for indulging what has become one of the more expensive rabbit holes of my life.

P.S. I just got engaged! Maybe it’s the new face? That was a joke. But I also swore after I got divorced I would never get married again. And here I am….we make plans and god laughs.

Happy reading.