see our before and after pictures

At 28 years old Tatiana has already spent more than $100,000 on plastic surgery.

She first went under the knife at 18 when she received a breast augmentation surgery she had been desperately wanting since puberty.

While the student, originally from Switzerland, wasn’t happy with the results, it didn’t stop her from having surgery again. Three years later her lips went under the knife of a clinician located nearby in France.

‘I always hated my lips,’ she told the Daily Mail.

There she received a lip lift, a procedure that elevates the upper lip by reducing the proximity to the nose, and a corner lip lift, which elevates the corners of the mouth to create a smiling expression.

At the same time, Tatiana also underwent buccal fat removal. ‘That was a real mistake,’ she said.

Not only was she not an ideal candidate for the buccal fat procedure, which removes a portion of fat in the lower cheek area to reduce fullness in the face, she also felt as though the surgeon took advantage of her young age.

‘I asked him at the time if it would age me and he said no,’ Tatiana said. ‘It didn’t look good at all.’

At just 21 years old, Tatiana felt like her ‘botched’ surgeries had made her look decades older than her actual age. She was intent on finding a trusted and reliable plastic surgeon who could correct some of the damage done.

Research led her to Dr Randal Haworth in Beverly Hills, California. The board-certified plastic surgeon performed a lower lip V-Y plasty to enhance Tatiana’s lower lip, as well as corrected the corner lip lift.

He also did fat grafting of her face to inject some of Tatiana’s natural tissue back into her cheeks, which had been hollowed out from the buccal fat removal.

Pleased with the results, she returned to Dr Haworth a year later for a breast augmentation revision, which was also successful. Finally, in 2024, she decided to undergo a facelift at 27.

‘I wanted my cheek to be a little bit higher,’ she said.

She paid $30,000 for an endoscopic midface lift, designed to lift sagging in the midface and areas surrounding the cheeks, nose and mouth. She also had a rotational endoscopic brow lift.

One year on from the facelift Tatiana said she is thrilled at the total transformation.

‘I’m very, very happy with it. It looks amazing and it doesn’t look fake,’ she said.

Tatiana is among many women far younger than the typical demographic who have recently opted for a partial or full facelift. More and more are turning to the age-defying surgery rather than injecting their faces with fillers, in pursuit of natural results.

Dermal fillers have reigned supreme in cosmetic treatments during the past two decades as a way to ward off the physical effects of aging and enhance specific facial features, for instance by creating fuller lips or a stronger jawline.

Now, it seems as though there is a countless stream of videos on TikTok showing young women dissolving their filler, with celebrities such as Kylie Jenner and Molly Mae Hague removing the liquid from their lips and face.

Plastic surgeons across the US have noticed the shift, too, as popular terms like ‘pillow face’, which refers to when a person’s cheeks and lips appear extremely puffy and unnatural, are sparking fear among their most loyal patients.

‘For the past 20 years the message has been if you’re in your 30s and you wanna do something, then you do all this non-surgical stuff such as fillers and using different radio frequency devices. [People thought that] if you do those things, you’re preventing aging from happening,’ Dr Amir Karam, a board certified plastic surgeon based in San Diego, told the Daily Mail.

‘But after 20 years, there is a couple of realizations that are emerging that those procedures don’t do anything,’ he said. ‘The consistent use of fillers over time really does change the shape of your face. You’re basically taking on a burden of risk without the benefits.’

The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery’s 2024 report indicated that 32 per cent of facelifts are now performed on those between the ages of 35 and 55, with Gen X and millennials leading the charge toward earlier, subtler and more preventative enhancements.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, AAFPRS president Dr Patrick J Byrne shared his thoughts as to why we are seeing more facelifts across younger age groups.

‘Our annual survey of facial plastic surgeons highlights that facelifts are the most requested procedure by a wide margin. The survey also noted a directional increase among patients aged 35 to 55, suggesting what we already knew: patients are coming in younger,’ he said.

‘In the past few years the average age of facelift patients has gone down. Patients want to look their best now instead of later, and they don’t want to wait or have any upkeep.’

Despite rising popularity, facelifts have often been the subject of stigma, especially when done badly. The experiences of celebrities such as Mickey Rourke and Katie Price have certainly given the procedure a bad rap, serving as a cautionary tale for anyone else who chooses to tighten their visage.

So if au naturel is the latest beauty trend, why are young women going to such extreme surgical measures? 

Well, it certainly helps that the facelift of today is nothing like the extremely taut facelifts of years past.

It is a not-so-hidden secret in the beauty world that these plastic surgeons are performing what’s called a deep plane facelift. Rather than simply pulling the skin, a deep plane facelift lifts and repositions the facial tissues deep beneath the muscle… with a faster recovery and longer-lasting results.

Dr Sam Rizk in New York City observes that among his 80 to 100 weekly consultations a growing number are women in their 20s and 30s. 

However, not everyone is a suitable candidate. For one thing, the average cost of a deep plane facelift is priced anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 depending on the surgeon.

A certain amount of facial laxity, sagginess or loss of firmness and elasticity in the skin is needed to even be considered for the facelift. This is something that, fortunately, not a lot of twenty-somethings struggle with.

Dr Karam said: ‘We turn away an overwhelming majority of these younger people who think that they may need something that they really don’t. My criteria for rejuvenation for younger patients is really about what the anatomy is.

‘Even though they’re interested in facial rejuvenation in some way or another, they probably didn’t even need to do those procedures in the first place.

‘The fact is we’ve been seeing this kind of trend for the past several years; we have more and more inquiries about this in our practice. Unfortunately for them, they’re not candidates for it.’

Thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of GLP-1 agonists and other weight loss medications, people who lose weight rapidly might also experience an excess of laxity in their face.

‘Ozempic face’, a term used to describe the appearance of gauntness, sunken cheeks, wrinkles and loose skin as a result of weight loss, has been dubbed one of the less flattering side effects of the drugs.

Dr Lesley Rabach, co-founder of LM Medical NYC, notes an uptick in facial surgeries for patients in their 30s and 40s who have experienced rapid weight loss. 

With more than 162,000 people aged 18 to 25 having used a GLP-1 drug such as Ozempic or Mounjaro in 2023 alone, according to recent research, more younger people could meet the qualifications needed for a facelift.

Dr Sean Alemi, a plastic surgeon based out of Long Island, New York, has also noticed a growing number of patients opting for facelifts after losing a significant amount of weight in their face.

However, both he and Dr Rabach stressed that, unless there’s a medical issue, performing facelift surgery on a 20-something year-old is not advised in her practice.

That has not stopped young women online from sharing the dramatic results of their face transformations.

Last December the TikTok influencer Gazelle Chavez received 6.4 million views on a video explaining why she had recently undergone a facelift at 24. 

She shared footage of her travels to Turkey for the brow lift and mid facelift in November last year, citing ‘loose skin’ around her nasal folds and neck.

Meanwhile, content creator Alice, who goes by @pickledpetshop1 on TikTok, garnered 323,800 views on a video sharing how she had an endoscopic ‘mini’ facelift at 28 to correct her smile lines.

Heidi, a 36-year-old content creator living in Missouri, traveled all the way to South Korea last year for a full facelift and dual rhinoplasty. But it wasn’t because she had ‘Ozempic face’ or that she needed corrective cosmetic surgery for a medical issue.

‘There’s an assumption that, as a woman, I changed myself just so other people would pay me more attention – for external validation,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘It’s always assumed that I did it for someone else or because society told me to. I did it for myself.’

When Heidi was 10 her younger brother had swung down from the second story of their house with a rope swing and hit her in the face with his steel-toed boots – leaving permanent damage to the left side of her face.

‘To me, it sagged more than the right side and, ever since I was 12, it bothered me,’ she said.

During a family vacation to Seoul in September 2023, Heidi soon learned that not only was plastic surgery in South Korea more affordable but it was also less stigmatized, with one in five Korean women undergoing procedures compared to just one in 20 in the US.

‘For the first time, I realized that this thing that I didn’t like about my face I could actually change. I didn’t have to just live with it any more,’ Heidi said.

She booked a virtual consultation with NANA Plastic Surgery, a clinic in Seoul specializing in cosmetic surgery, and had another in-depth consultation when she arrived at the clinic in April last year.

Her full facelift and rhinoplasty, which lasted eight to 10 hours, were valued at $28,000. As an influencer Heidi struck a deal in which she only had to incur the cost of her flight and a three-week stay at an Airbnb.

Heidi has made a career out of filming content for her 235,000 TikTok followers, which is why she felt the need to be transparent with her fans when it came to revealing that she had undergone a facelift at 36.

‘I knew full well that there was going to be backlash,’ she said. ‘So many people commented really mean things: You don’t need it. You shouldn’t have done that. It’s a tragedy. You’re a bad example. You caved. You’re so weak. 

‘My clap back is, “No, I didn’t need it at all. I just wanted it for myself.” The idea that I just wanted it for me and I wasn’t doing it for anybody else was so foreign to so many people.’

Heidi is not alone. She’s just one of the many women who spend an average of $1,064 per year on their appearance, according to a 2024 report from Advanced Dermatology. 

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons also reported an 8 per cent increase in facelifts performed in 2023 compared to the previous year, citing filler fatigue as a possible reason for the rise in popularity. 

Even amid higher interest rates and tightening budgets, Americans still seemed to prioritize cosmetic surgery.

‘People aren’t waiting until they’re 50 or 60 any more,’ said Dr Babak Azzizadeh, a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon located in Beverly Hills. ‘If they need a facelift in their mid-40s, there isn’t that stigma to it.’

Dr Azzizadeh makes sure to point out that no matter what age patients choose to undergo a facelift it certainly will not stop the natural process that is aging. 

And for those who go under the knife much earlier than typical patients, that may complicate things down the line.

‘Let’s say you get a facelift in your late 30s. In your late 50s, you may need a secondary facelift, but that secondary facelift needs to be done with care and understanding that a previous surgery has been performed,’ he said.

It’s been one year since both Tatiana and Heidi had their facelifts, and they have zero regrets. Still, neither one expects to go under the knife again any time soon.

‘I know that a lot of people are going to judge but at the end of the day it’s about yourself and how you feel,’ Tatiana said.