Research Calls Plastic Surgery Makes Faces Look Younger, But No More Interesting

Illustration (Anna Shvets/Pexels)

JAKARTA - A new study shows that face-lift operations can make your face three years younger, but won't make you more beautiful. Plastic surgery often begins with the desire to look younger and more attractive. However, these two things may not materialize, although leading surgeons have done their best.

A recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that although facial plastic surgery can make the face look about three years younger visually, the surgery doesn't make a person look more beautiful or attractive.

"A surprising finding is that we don't see a statistically significant increase in attraction," said study author Dr. A. Joshua Zimm, a plastic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, reported Healthline, Tuesday, July 29.

Between 2006 and 2010, 37 women and 12 men aged between 42 and 73 who have undergone facial care procedures, such as face lifts, neck lifts, and browser lifts, were photographed and included in further research.

Fifty assessors, each randomly inserted into the assessment group, were shown nearly 200 photos of patients, both before and after surgery. The assessors recorded the age they expected for each patient in each photo, and gave patients an attraction score from 1 to 10.

After surgery, the patient's face looks 3.1 years younger than their age, but for "beauty" it seems a bit difficult to measure.

Overall, 75 percent of patients are scored between 4 and 7. These numbers do not change significantly between pre- and post-operational photos. Contrary to expectations, perhaps, no one has changed from a score of 4 to 10 after facial exclusion surgery.

In contemporary culture, there is an unspoken relationship between age and attraction, namely the older a person, the less "less" he looks. In this way, you unconsciously give other people an attractive score, Zimm said. That means you may think someone 70 years old is less beautiful than a 45 year old person.

"Everyone who has facial surgery to reduce aging wants to look better," said Zimm, although most people don't always say it. Performance that looks better could mean a look fresher face or for some people to look younger.

"As an aesthetic surgeon, one of the things we've always avoided is saying 'You'll look 15 years younger after surgery' and things related to wrong or unrealistic expectations," Zimm said.

If you go to a cosmetic surgeon clinic, you'll most likely hear 'fresh' before hearing 'more interesting.' Doctors want to do sales, but also have to control the patient's expectations.

"One of the complexities of this kind of study is that we try to object something that is very, very subjective, and there are many traps in this kind of thing," said Zimm.

"Aaron Spelling said something like this when trying to describe beauty: 'I can't describe it, but I can recognize beauty when someone enters the room.'"

So, the essence of this study is a truth that most people already know. That is, attraction is not something that is easy to define or create, even for the most skilled surgeons.