'Guadalajara' facelifts: the latest capitalistic invention promising the fantasy of eternal youth
By Sienna Barton
Deep-plane facelifts promise to wind the clock back decades - at least for those who can afford it. But what are we sacrificing in our pursuit of eternal youth?
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Two men, a gaggle of “elderly” women and a 25-year-old woman walk into a bar… The men are drinking by themselves, watching the 25-year-old gossip with a bunch of women decades her senior. “Maybe it’s a church thing?” they speculate. Noticing them looking at her, the 25-year-old approaches. Something about her seems old-fashioned and the way she talks doesn’t match how she looks. One of the men flirts with her and they exchange niceties until he asks what she does for work. Turns out she’s retired… and actually 65-years-old.
Now, I know that reads like cheesy speculative fiction, but it’s the experience of TikTok user Mark Roberts, whose viral video was my first introduction to the world of the “Guadalajara” facelift.
Despite being performed around the world, the deep-plane facelift has earned its nickname after an influx of Americans travelled to Mexico’s Guadalajara for the procedure and shared the results on social media. While traditional facelifts lifted skin away from the underlying layer of muscles (also known as the SMAS), often leaving faces looking tight and obviously operated on, the deep-plane variety work underneath this layer of muscles - allowing surgeons to "release" the ligaments that hold down the neck and face. From there, the surgeon is able to lift and drape the skin and SMAS as a single unit; ultimately yielding a much more “natural” result. It’s a brutal-looking procedure, with facial swelling lasting for months afterward.
Watching footage of a “bucket-handle” deep-plane facelift (a variation where the incision is smaller), I peeked at the screen through my fingers, wincing at every snip and tug. It felt like something out of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. Despite the gore, watching a surgeon peel back layers of a woman’s face feels bizarrely intimate. She’s completely vulnerable at that moment, and no one else will hold the insides of her face in their hands - that is, until her next facelift.
Roberts framed his interaction with the pseudo-25-year-old as a classic bait-n-switch - a woman whose real age was completely imperceptible - another way for women to trick men, like photo filters and makeup. At the same time, Michelle Wood, an American single mum also went viral for her staggeringly transformative deep-plane facelift, as Kris Jenner unveiled her new face in Paris, while Skims busily spruiked their range of facial shapewear (which look suspiciously like facelift recovery bandages). This all comes in the wake of TikTok users’ mass horrified reactions at seeing what they look like using the aged filter, inflaming an already very prevalent fear of ageing - or, rather, of looking old.
When talking about Jenner’s facelift back in May, my friend’s reaction was that it “bodes well for us in the future”. We’re both 32, working in acting (her) and modelling (me), wholly aware of the implicit (and sometimes explicit) messaging that our ability to book desirable jobs lies in looking young. Getting cosmetic procedures hasn’t really felt like a question of “if” but of “when”. Despite being a staunch feminist, I’ve bought into so many age-minimising skincare fads - red light masks, multi-step skincare routines, slathering my face in snail mucin. It’s something I’m a little bit sheepish about; feeling embarrassed that I’m partaking while understanding that the appearance of youth is a valuable commodity.
Speaking to Vogue Arabia, Jenner reasons that she got her facelift (her second, by the way) so that she could be the “best version” of herself, adding that getting older doesn’t mean “giv[ing] up on yourself”. While I don’t have qualms with people getting cosmetic surgery, there is something fundamentally betraying about framing it as self-improvement. For me, this reasoning speaks to the infiltration of capitalism into therapy-speak and wellness language. You might get a facelift because of the harsh reality that more than a third of Australians over the age of 55 have experienced age-related discrimination, but in order for your choice to be palatable, it needs to be steeped in language of self-acceptance or positivity.
But the thing about the pursuit of self-improvement is that it is never ending. Once you zero-in on a flaw and fix it, there’s always something else that needs your attention next. Beauty trends are cyclical, always changing, which means the goal posts are always moving, but even if they weren’t, the effects of a deep-plane facelift only last for 10-15 years. Knowing that we can only pause the clock, rather than stop it altogether, you have to wonder what the point is in trying at all?
About the author
Sienna Barton
Sienna is a Naarm-based writer, artist and model. Her writing focuses on issues like body image, relationships and sex, feminism, and familial trauma. She holds a BA in Creative Writing, an Hons in Media Comms and a MFA - all from RMIT. Her favourite pieces of writing combine brutal vulnerability, sharp jokes, wild absurdity, and just a touch of crass pop culture (although, isn’t calling it crass just deeply rooted in misogyny anyway?)
