Before I had my facelift, I spent an embarrassing amount of time spiraling down Instagram rabbit holes. I screenshot and zoomed in on every pre- and post-op facelift incision I could find.
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 for endless hours for many months. Studying ear stitch work was my main hobby in the second half of 2025.
People post before and afters, they don’t necessarily post insane close ups of their ears and post op scars. Naturally, this lack of information only made me more unhinged and I scoured instagram and the internet even further. Obsessive, borderline psychotic research is kind of my thing, if you haven’t read my bio.
Now that my Substack has developed a rather extensive facelift wing and I am nearly 6 months post my own facelift, I feel it is my duty, perhaps even my civic obligation, to post my own completely unfiltered, extremely close-up photos of my ears and incisions.
But first, let’s start from the beginning. I made this video of the morning after my surgery. The photo was taken by my recovery nurse Olivia and I made it talk. Cool huh? I am trying to use AI for good. I’ll also post this on my instagram.
A few months before surgery, I started doing deep dives with some of my New York cosmetic doctor friends. I’m incredibly lucky to have a few brilliant doctors in my actual girlfriend circle, which is also precisely why none of them made it onto my list of $5,000 facelift consults. Having your girlfriend reconstruct your face just felt a little too intimate. 😂
But I did what any good friend would do: I abused my access and asked my cosmetic doctor girlfriends approximately 4,000 questions.
This mostly involved meeting at cocktail bars around Manhattan, where I drank two or three martinis and rapid-fired questions about my face, all while my doctor friends drank sparkling water because they had to operate on actual humans the next morning. Luckily, good girlfriends indulge your crazy. This pretty accurately sums up our respective roles in the friendship.
So I wouldn’t call what follows a formal Q&A. Think of it more as a Girlfriend’s Deep Dive, reconstructed from conversations with very smart people who were kind enough to deal with me during my facelift spiraling stage of life.
One of those amazingly intelligent women is New York based plastic surgeon, Dr. Melissa Doft. She is wickedly smart, incredibly talented, and has exactly the bedside manner you want from someone who may be taking a scalpel to your face or body.
I recently recommended her to a dear friend considering a mommy makeover. I would genuinely trust Melissa with any part of my body. She’s also been contributing her expertise to Charlotte’s Book for more than a decade. I also swear by her Morpheus repair mask. But that’s another story.
Her overall philosophy is also very much aligned with mine: you should still look like yourself. The goal isn’t to walk out with someone else’s face. It’s to really understand the anatomy, the patient goals, make thoughtful choices, and ideally have nobody quite figure out what the hell you did.
Among my approximately 4,000 pre-facelift questions, one kept coming up: How does a surgeon actually decide where to put the incisions? I’d seen so many Instagram stories and reels with scars and stitches that I couldn’t figure out what was the exact “right” spot and what I should actually be looking for? So naturally, I brought my ear obsession to Melissa.
Is There A True “Correct” Placement For Facelift Incisions?
The answer is: it’s patient-dependent. It depends on your anatomy, your surgeon, and whether this is your first facelift or your third facelift.
Dr. Melissa Doft, or Melissa as I will call her for the rest of this article, explained to me a bit about the evolution of incision placement: “The traditional facelift incisions were hidden in the temple hair, then curved around the root of the helix, straight in front of the tragus, around the lobule and posterior sulcus, and into the hairline.”
She continued, “This changed to curving the scar along the root of the helix, into the ear and hidden behind the tragus, and then coming around the lobule. Some surgeons believe the tragus should not be touched as the skin is inherently thinner in that area. I personally prefer option two because the straight scar is more obvious, and I do not think the blunted tragus is significant.”
By the way, the images above are ChatGPT drawings I asked it to make of me using photos from Day 7 of my facelift. Below are the actual photos from that day at multiple zoom levels. Because I know if I don’t do it for you, you’ll just be screenshotting and aggressively pinching your phone screen to inspect my ear anyway.
What About Revision (Secondary) Facelifts?
Melissa also made a point of explaining that revision facelifts are a different animal, and this matters when you’re choosing a surgeon. I’ve recently started doing facelift consults myself. Yes, apparently this is something I do now. To be very clear, I’m not a doctor, nurse, or medical expert, and I’m not giving medical advice. I’m simply a woman who has been through a facelift, researched the living hell out of it, and learned a lot along the way. Some women just want to talk to someone who’s actually been through it, ask the questions they might feel silly asking a surgeon, and get practical girlfriend-to-girlfriend advice. I’ve now spoken with several women considering revisions, and in those conversations I do stress how important this distinction is.
So, a note for anyone surgeon-shopping for a revision: ask specifically how many revision facelifts your surgeon performs. Don’t just ask how many facelifts they do. Revision surgery comes with previous incisions, scar tissue, altered anatomy, and decisions already made by another surgeon. Experience with that particular puzzle matters.
Melissa notes that, “In a secondary facelift, the incision often changes from inside the temple hair to along the sideburn in women. This is because the hairline was raised during the first operation and you do not want to raise the hairline again. This is not the case in men because they have a beard and can grow a new sideburn.”
And The Newer ENT-Inspired Method?
Melissa added a really interesting data point about ENT’s doing facelift work now. She said that “recently, ENT surgeons have popularized making an incision around the temple hairline along the skin and a long incision along the posterior hair on the scalp. Making a longer incision posteriorly was often used for patients with large turkey necks to remove excess skin but was not as common in the average facelift. I do not like to make the incision around the temple hairline as it is more visible.”
So, Where Does This Leave You?
In summation it depends on your anatomy (large neck vs small, skin quality, hairline position), whether it’s your first, second, or third facelift, your surgeon’s philosophy and technique. It’s your job is to ask, ask, ask and look at healed results.
Melissa says when looking at before and after photos “one week is too early. 3 months is a fair time to look at scars. But scars really take a year to fully heal. Many surgeons do not have photos at one year as happy patients follow-up at 3 months and then often do not find the need to come again.”
Will I Lose My Sideburns?
This one was a personal obsession of mine before I went into surgery. I have long hair, I work out a lot, and I am a pony-tail girl. So the idea of losing sideburns or having an obviously shifted hairline kept me up at night.
According to Melissa: “I prefer to place my incision behind the hair to avoid the incision along the temporal hair tuft. This is not an area where there is a lot of loose skin, so only a little bit of hair is removed.”
Translation: in the right hands, you shouldn’t lose much if any hair. It’s dependent on patient anatomy and surgeon choice. My waspy sideburns have slowly grown back. It took me about 3 months to feel comfortable wearing a tight ponytail again.
I hope this helps anyone currently doing what I was doing before my facelift: staring at hundreds of before-and-afters and zooming into strangers’ ears. The more you understand before a consult, the better questions you can ask and the better decisions you can make for your own face.
There may not be one universally “correct” facelift incision, but you should absolutely understand where yours will be and why your surgeon puts it there. And if posting extremely close-up photos of my own ears saves you 45 minutes a day on Instagram, my work here is done.
I’ll post another story soon with more day-by-day photos you can see what recovery actually looks like. No filters. No flattering angles. No music. No CapCut Instagram transformation. Just brutally honest, extremely close-ups.
And one thing I really want to stress: my surgeon is not necessarily your surgeon. I absolutely loved Dr. Mark Murphy and I think I look great. But, choosing a facelift surgeon is incredibly personal. You have to vibe with them. Obviously, technical skill, experience, and mastery of the procedure matter enormously, but I think bedside manner matters more than people realize. Maybe your surgeon is Melissa, maybe it’s Mark (just kidding we aren’t on first name basis yet), maybe it’s Dr. Ben Talei.
As I wrote in How Not to F*ck Up Your Facelift Recovery, recovery is a mindfck. You are swollen, bruised, vulnerable, and wondering why you voluntarily did this to yourself. Having a surgeon you can easily communicate with and genuinely feel comfortable calling when you are asking “ when will I feel my left ear again” is essential. If a surgeon is rushing you through a consult, my advice is maybe he’s not the one for you. By the way, that ear question is an actual question I got from someone this week whom I helped find a surgeon.
Hope this all helps! This post was free. Pretty please upgrade to paid for more juicy, fun, raw stuff coming soon. And a little shameless promotion: If you are facelift shopping, check out the Girlfriend’s Guide to having the best consult ever and The Ultimate Recovery Shopping list.
And if you haven’t read my viral article on fake Middle Aged Influencers from last week or my deep dive into the 800 comments. Please get reading!
You are awesome! Thank you. A client sent me your AI influencer article where I found 40 of my clients following some, or all, of the accounts you mentioned. Crazy! Also crazy, for the first time in my 52 years I mentioned “facelift” out loud yesterday and then this shows up 🤯 wish I lived in NY! New here, but clearly in the right place! ❤️🙏
As always a fantastic article, thank you.