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If an extraterrestrial had a baseline familiarity with New Year’s resolutions and a stable internet connection to Earth, they might surmise the No. 1 resolution for us silly humans in 2025 was a snatched face. Who among us, this year, has not been confronted with the question “Did they have a face-lift?”—if not over dinner, at least in a news headline? From Lindsay Lohan to Kris Jenner, face-lift rumors in Hollywood became as ubiquitous as the unfurling of a red carpet. Other names on Hollywood’s 2025 Did They? list include: Bradley Cooper, Brad Pitt, and Anne Hathaway, and even younger celebrities like Emma Stone (37) and Jennifer Lawrence (35), who raised eyebrows due to their raised eyebrows. Jenner confirmed—on her own terms, albeit after much speculation—that she received a face-lift from New York–based Dr. Steven Lavine ahead of her 70th birthday. Lohan, in conversation with comedian and actress Chloe Fineman for Elle, said her rejuvenation is the result of carrot, ginger, lemon, olive oil, and apple juice.
The operative word in this year’s speculative chatter is did, as in, “Did she even do anything?” which is even harder to surmise when some at the center of speculation are already young, at least compared to the traditionally assumed age for face-lift patrons. It’s worth noting that getting a face-lift or any other cosmetic procedure is technically no one’s business. But the tenor of the speculation—and the barely detectable results of the work—have led us into a new era where subtlety reigns supreme. Remember 2024’s quiet luxury craze? 2025 took that trend and added sutures. This has been the year of the quiet face-lift.
Face-lift is a blanket term for a surgical intervention most commonly used to reduce the appearance of aging by tightening skin, thus smoothing wrinkles and rejuvenating the face’s contours to communicate: Hello, world, I’m young and full of collagen. But much like a patient’s skin, the term has been stretched, stitched, and twisted, as new styles and innovations enter the medical (and thus the cultural) zeitgeist. This year, aesthetics’ It Girl was the deep-plane face-lift: the process of going beneath the superficial musculoaponeurotic system and releasing some of the face’s ligaments. In layperson’s terms, this method doesn’t rely on skin tension, and the results can be startlingly natural—the white whale for anyone going under the knife, and the thing that drives Instagram surgeons and the masses to hit record and cry with awe, “What the f*ck is her secret?” While injectables, like neuromodulators (Botox) or hyaluronic acid fillers (Juvéderm, Voluma, Restylane), are used for mild-to-moderate face reshaping and line reduction, the storied face-lift is the most long-lasting solution for sagging skin in a plastic surgeon’s repertoire. But it’s not a permanent fix: Receiving a face-lift in your 30s means another face-lift in your 40s, another in your 50s, another in your 60s—scar tissue accumulating—in perpetuity to maintain the results. Still, the siren’s song of drum-tight skin continues to pique the masses’ curiosity.
When I think back to meandering grocery store aisles or checkout lines in the early aughts, I remember how the face-lifts of old were deemed a spotlight on insecurity—the telltale sign of (almost always) a woman growing long in the tooth, grasping at a means to maintain youth, to be worthy of the public’s attention. In 2025, though, with advancements in aesthetics and technology, the face-lift is welcomed with open arms—as long as the results appear natural. No longer a spotlight, face-lifts are more akin to a Birkin: classically chic, Pinterest-board-ready, and most vitally, at least if you’re a denizen of BeautyTok, aspirational.
Thanks to our ongoing crisis of media literacy, these very real, very intensive surgeries have been distilled into before-and-after images in a flurry of quick-hit, wait-for-the-big-reveal TikTok videos. According to the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, there has been an explosion in appetite for face-lifts, especially in younger prospective patients—as many as 32 percent of face-lift procedures are performed on those aged 35 to 55. As dermatologist Dr. Shereene Idriss commented on a viral reel of a young woman getting a deep-plane face-lift at 30 years old, “We’ve lost the plot on aesthetic procedures.”
Still, I am entirely pro–aesthetic intervention. My friends and I, seemingly every other week, cheer one of our mothers on through face-lift recovery. I’ve received neuromodulators and hyaluronic filler—cheeks and tear troughs—since I was 25, and I had a chin implant when I was 28. (I’m now 32.) I, too, get weak in the knees when someone says, “I can’t tell you’ve had anything done.” There’s also a 99.9 percent chance I will, one day, clear my schedule, don a plastic medical gown, and get a face-lift. I am acutely aware this is due to my own vanity, but my vanity doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t cause me shame. Some people release their tension and stress in hot yoga classes. I hate yoga, and I hate sweating even more, so I find my flow state during my nightly skin care routine. Preening, massaging, slugging—whatever—is my dutiful way of paying respect to my body. When I’m older and on my way out of this life, I want to see my glory days as heartfelt memories, not necessarily as lines debossed across my face.
The conversation around aesthetics is taut—I mean fraught—with tempestuous takes from opposing sides. The zeitgeist’s Kris Jenners, who announce their cosmetic work, up against those on the side of actress Kate Winslet, who disavowed injectables in an interview with the Sunday Times, saying “young women have no concept of what being beautiful actually is.”
Whether or not that’s true, 2025 was the year we let the cat out of the bag, and that cat has lifted brows, a tighter jaw, and fuller lips.
