The Male Gaze, the Mirror, and the ROI of Looking Like Yourself

Is my facelift for me… or him?

Recently, I spent a week in Los Angeles visiting friends, consulting plastic surgeons, and pretending it was all just light shopping. One night, at the top of the new Soho House Holloway, I found myself deep in a very serious conversation with a rather diverse group of gal pals. The topic on the table being: Is all of this actually just about looking better for men?

By all of this, I mean Botox, injectables, and surgical interventions - the entire modern aesthetic industrial complex. The setting of this debate couldn’t be more fitting. L.A. is L.A. Context matters. This is a city where faces are currency, youth is a religion, and self-improvement can feel less like a choice and more like ambient pressure. Which is exactly why this question begged to be asked, hovering somewhere between the cocktails, guacamole cart, and the skyline: Who are we really doing this for?

Around the table were women aged 47 to 60, two actively shopping for facelift surgeons, one proudly only doing fillers and botox, claiming never would she do a facelift, and a fourth gal going fully natural into aging.

It’s an age-old debate - the aging gracefully one - and my position hasn’t changed: I do this for me. Even if my friends remain unconvinced. They insist I’m brainwashed by the patriarchy, the media, or some unholy collaboration between the two.

“If we lived in a world without men,” one of them asked, “would you still want a facelift?” This topic was subtly discussed in the banter of comments in my piece on why Kate Winslet and I will never be friends. The article went a bit viral in the comments and was picked up by Mama Mia. I am working on a full follow up…so stay tuned.

But on this topic of, are we doing this for pure vanity or for ourselves, there is lots to be said. I believe it’s a bit of both.

I’m not naïve enough to think I exist outside the influence of media or cultural expectation. But I also know how my face affects my inner state. My brow feels heavy. My mouth turns down. And when I look in the mirror, I feel angrier than I actually am.

It isn’t self-loathing. It’s dissonance. I don’t recognize the woman staring back at me. The fatigue on my face feels contagious, as if it’s teaching my body how to feel. I don’t chase youth, and I don’t chase the male gaze. I chase clarity or at least alignment. When I look tired, I feel tired. When my face pulls down, so does my energy.

Maybe that’s where the discomfort lives. Wanting your outside to reflect your inside still means believing the mirror has authority. And maybe the real question isn’t whether I’m doing this for myself or for men, but how much power I’m willing to give my reflection over my inner life.

Going back to the debate among friends, one of my girlfriends who is a former actress, longtime beauty editor, and professional truth-teller pushed back hard on me. She argued that I can call it empowerment or mood regulation all day long, but that it’s ultimately a cover story I tell myself.

In the context of this L.A. crowd, she told us, looking younger and refreshed isn’t just aesthetic - it’s professional. It signals relevance. It means more work. In that sense, it’s an economic decision.

The pendulum may be swinging back a bit. We now have actresses refusing to conform to surgical intervention. It’s now being rebranded as “real face” supremacy. Clare Danes and Keri Russell are leading the pack of women whose faces look largely untouched on screen, expressive, and undeniably lived-in. They are hopefully changing the ideal that it isn’t agelessness; it’s credibility. You can see the years and they are gorgeous. I hope it sticks.

But even if it does stick, it wouldn’t change my mind on my decision to enroll surgical intervention. And that is my point.

So as women, if we pick a side, are we automatically in a battle with the opposing side of women? Can I straddle both?

The Male Gaze Never Really Left

“I’m doing it for me” is the feminist mantra, but it apparently doesn’t apply to facelifts and aesthetic touch ups that involve needles. As a feminist, what I am learning is that this mantra excludes anything under cosmetic dermatology or plastic surgery.

The truth is that the male gaze is baked into the wallpaper. It built the lighting, the filters, the ring lights…so it’s quite hard to honestly isolate the “I’m doing it for me” argument.

Even when we swear we’ve opted out, are we still performing a bit? The male gaze has evolved, too; it’s now algorithmic. It’s the invisible metric that rewards us for looking “natural,” “healthy,” “well.”

You don’t even need men to feel watched, your camera roll does it for you. Phones and social media have made it more prevalent. So is this in my pschye too?

We say it’s not about men anymore, and maybe it’s not. But it’s still about being seen. Both internally and externally.

And this is why I think the backlash of surgical treatments seems to only apply to face treatments. This I find incredibly interesting. Our culture has a very selective tolerance for women “fixing” their bodies. A mommy makeover? Perfectly acceptable. A tummy tuck, breast lift, or reconstruction after childbirth is framed as reclaiming oneself. But touch the face, lift a jowl, smooth a neck and suddenly it’s a moral failing. Now you’re accused of “erasing stories” on your face and bowing down to the male gaze.

Women can surgically erase the physical evidence of motherhood, but not the visible markers of time itself. Body-focused surgeries are often shaped as reclaiming after life events (like childbirth), while facial surgeries are often interpreted purely as vanity or trying to erase aging.

The Mood Face Connection

Here’s my stance: your face affects your feelings. Science even says so - it’s called the facial feedback loop. When you smile, your brain releases serotonin. When you frown, it doesn’t. Psychologists trace the idea back to Darwin and William James, and it has been studied experimentally for decades.

A 2022 Stanford study confirmed that even posing a smile can measurably improve mood (news.stanford.edu). Research from the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology (2021) and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons shows patients reporting improvements in self-esteem, social confidence, and depressive symptoms after facial rejuvenation surgery.

One of my favorite books of all time, Survival of The Prettiest, by social scientist Nancy Etkoff of Harvard University discusses it, “Facial aging changes the way others respond to us and how we respond to ourselves.”

The last part is key: how we respond to ourselves.

So what happens when your resting expression starts telling your brain you’re tired, sad, or over it even when you’re not? When your reflection starts to look permanently tired, your brain interprets it as fatigue, even if you slept eight hours.

Maybe the facelift isn’t about reversing age, but about syncing mood and mirror. When your face says “energized,” your body listens. When your jawline holds, so does your confidence. Maybe it’s not vanity. Maybe it’s serotonin management.

The Economics of Beauty and Time

Now this may be off topic a bit, but one of the main reasons I engage in beauty treatments is to get back my time. I spend money on lasers so I don’t need foundation. I get hair extensions so I can skip blow-drying and spending time doing my hair all together. It saves me hours and hours every week. I pay for convenience, not perfection. Studies show that women perceive time saved on beauty routines as increased “subjective well-being.” (2020, Frontiers in Psychology).

Time is my most expensive beauty product. To me, a facelift in my head, lives in the same category: one big investment to save me thousands of micro-decisions later. Less concealer, less contouring, less fighting gravity before coffee. No more trips to the dermatologist office to get filler and botox. I expect this investment to last me 10-15 years.

And when I calculate the hours I’ve spent managing my appearance, it suddenly feels like the most rational line item in my beauty budget.

The Liberation (Sort Of)

Maybe I am still performing, but at least I’m directing the play. If I choose to lift, it’s not for “him.” It’s for me. The me that wants to feel awake, visible, and congruent with who I actually am inside.

A facelift doesn’t erase my age. It just lets my mood catch up to my mirror. Maybe I’m buying back a little time. Maybe I’m still tangled in the gaze. What do you think? Tell me in the comments!