Face-lifts vs. Fillers

Catherine Deneuve put it succinctly: "At a certain age you have to choose between your face and your ass." If you are plump, your face may have some of the roundness associated with youth. If you are of normal weight or thin, your face will very likely be hollow. However, it doesn't have to be like that, as this photo of Dara Torres shows. If you look at her hands, they look her age of 41.
If you look at her face, it has the fullness of youth.

When you look at a photo of the US 50m women's freestyle relay team , you'll note that there is not much difference in the fullness of Tara's face, and that of her teammates, ages 26, 21 and 23. Perhaps the fullness of Tara's face at her weight and age is part of her natural endowment, but that is certainly not the case for most of us mortals.
The much more common story is the progression that is seen in photos

of Jessica Lange in youth and in age, after surgery. You can see the
unnatural appearing eyebrows, the flatness of the cheeks near the nose, the descent of the "apple" of the cheek, the wider smile and the gaunt appearing neck. This is a typical post face-lift and brow-lift appearance.
Today we can much more accurately recreate a youthful appearance using fillers instead of surgery.  Surgically tightening the skin flattens the face giving it an unnatural appearance. Face-lifts change the facial proportions.
The message is getting through. A while back photos of Madonna showed her with hollow cheeks and a gaunt appearance. More recent photos show her with plump apple cheeks.
There have been a number of actresses who have seemed to defy aging.
Demi Moore appears to have aged
very little in the last 20 years. We have seen the future and it is fillers.

Gerald N. Bock MD
California Skin & Laser Center
Stockton & Lodi, CA