It was only a few years ago that, when anyone asked Jamie how old he was, the reaction was almost universal. “Oh my God, you look so good for your age,” they’d gasp. “So young!” But about two years ago an imperceptible shift took place. Suddenly, much to his chagrin, he’d reveal the magic number—46, 47 as he was then—and he was met with frozen smiles and a subtle but telling “Hmmm!” Or “Oh!”
“I was just looking tired,” Jamie, who lives in New York and asked not to use his full name, says. “And I feel like it happened rather quickly.” In his view, tired meant puffy, sagging skin at the upper and outer lids, and the dreaded bags underneath. Even his wife said that she thought he was looking pretty exhausted.
And so, last summer, he went to see cosmetic surgeon Dr. David Shafer, of the Shafer Clinic, to discuss his options. Sure, he could get more sleep, drink more water, slather on the SPF, and all the rest. But those actions are mostly preventative and, even when carried out regularly, can yield minimal results at best.
There was an alternative, Shafer says: a short, minor procedure called a blepharoplasty, commonly known as an eyelid lift, or the excision of sagging skin. Gone are the days of leaving the doctor’s office wrapped in bandages, disappearing for weeks, and reappearing all taut. Today, blepharoplasty is an outpatient procedure that takes just a few hours and requires only a couple of days of recovery—you could go in on Friday and theoretically be back at work on Monday. (The bruising, however, may lead colleagues to wonder whether you’d been in a bar fight.) Blepharoplasty involves the removal of excess skin that starts to gather on the eyelids as our demis ages, and skin loses its elasticity. It’s a natural sign of aging, and a total buzzkill when you want to stay—and feel—young.
“Here’s the truth,” another man told me about his decision, at 72, to get a blepharoplasty. “Being out of the game is fucked up, and it happens so quickly.” This guy—we’ll call him Walter—is a successful businessman: the kind who FaceTimes me from Panama, where he works part of the year from a beach. He found Dr. Shafer through his connections as a board member of a big hospital in Manhattan. He shows me his tanned face and his spry, almost mischievous eyes that, to my gaze, seem very youthful—but not suspiciously so.
What Walter’s hinting at is the fact that, as you get older, the world can see you differently. Not as experienced or wise, but as out of touch. And while it’s perhaps not talked about as openly, many men, as they age, begin to feel it—that notion that your insides don’t quite match your outsides. “I find younger people are accepting me more in the corporate space since the procedure,” he says. “I’m back in the game.”
Dr. Shafer, who runs his practice from the 33rd floor of a clean, airy skyscraper along a stretch of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, noticed a considerable uptick in business during the pandemic—especially for eye-related procedures, and from men and women. “Men, who traditionally might have shied away from cosmetic surgery or treatment, are coming in more and more now,” he says. He chalks it up to two separate, but related phenomena, both tied to the pandemic. “Men have spent the last couple of years looking at themselves on Zoom,” he says. “And people have also been working at home for two years and they want to look good when they go back to the office.” Many have been using filters to optimize their appearances over the last few years. But as our corporate overlords start to gently (or not-so-gently) pressure us back into the office, face-to-face interactions are on the rise—and so is the harrowing prospect of being seen in the flesh.
Max Berlinger
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