A striking woman a few years older than me once told me she never wasted money on facials because it was like paying for someone to ‘wash her face’ with expensive cleanser.
Her secret to her taut and glowing skin?
‘Genetics,’ she always said.
I smiled knowingly. Because I was certain she was talking absolute codswallop.
Fair enough, she didn’t want to tell me and she didn’t have to. Not everyone wants to declare their beauty secrets to the world. But I knew the truth.
The secret to her youthful face was certainly not her grandmother’s genes or a tub of La Mer. It was a facelift. And I knew that because I could see the very dainty scars just to the side of her ears.
Admittedly they were faint – only a trained eye would notice them – but you see, I was the trained eye. I’ve been under the knife myself and I’ve got those tiny scars – and I have absolutely no shame or embarrassment in telling the world I had a facelift at 45. Hand on my heart, it was the best thing I have ever done to my face.
It’s better than Botox, fillers, expensive facials, luxury serums and skin treatments (and don’t even get me started on the much-hyped thread lift – that was sheer agony, a colossal waste of money, and barely lasted two months before my cheeks turned south. Even a surgeon told me, quite bluntly, not to waste my money).
Actress Denise Richards, 55, showed off the stunning results from her recent facelift
Kris Jenner is 70 – but looks several decades younger thanks to a phenomenal facelift
Yep, I wasted thousands upon thousands of dollars believing I could slather, jab and moisturise my way out of ageing.
None of these non-surgical or minimally invasive treatments really worked – and it took having my first facelift to realise that. And what a shattering realisation it was.
I’ve only been in love a few times but my longest, most devoted crush is on my plastic surgeon Dr Pouria Moradi, the curator of my boobs and my facelift. Frankly, he’s done more for my self-esteem and confidence than any other man ever has.
Of everything I write in my columns, nothing is more certain than this, ladies: facelifts work. Not just ‘a bit’. They bloody work.
In fact, my facelift is hands down the best surgery I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a few.
The effect of my facelift was better than a good diet, no booze and all the sunscreen in the world.
Why? Because it’s simple. I’m not going to dress it up with wellness waffle: a facelift does what nothing else can.
They’re expensive and painful, with weeks of downtime as your face balloons, but the results are soft, natural and they last.
Modern, deep-plane facelifts work beneath the surface, repositioning the underlying facial muscle and connective tissue – so results look softer and far more natural, writes Amanda
Daily Mail columnist Amanda Goff is pictured before her facelift
‘I have absolutely no shame or embarrassment in telling the world I had a facelift at 45… It was the best thing I have ever done to my face,’ writes Amanda (pictured after her facelift)
After decades of celebrities claiming their secret is lemon water and silk pillowcases – insisting a good night’s sleep explains it all – the tide is finally turning. Women are now admitting to facelifts, and I’m thanking the Lord for their honesty.
Denise Richards has just done what few famous women are brave enough to do: she’s admitted she had a facelift. If I looked like her, I’d shout it from the rooftops too.
I mean, she looks bloody phenomenal. Any woman who says otherwise is jealous – pure and simple.
Her Beverly Hills-based plastic surgeon Dr Ben Talei performed a deep-plane facelift, temporal brow lift, upper blepharoplasty and lip lift. Denise is 55 and she calls the before-and-after result like ‘night and day’.
I call it bloody genius, and a brilliant PR move from Dr Talei, who no doubt now has a waiting list of saggy-jowled perimenopausal women longer than my arm.
And Denise isn’t alone. We all clambered to know who performed Kris Jenner’s facelift procedures, and even Robbie Williams has mused about getting one, saying he’d rather look like himself still, just younger.
We’re all whispering that actress Anne Hathaway looks ‘refreshed’ lately – and while she hasn’t come out and said it, I reckon it would take more than a few needles to achieve the tautness of her 43-year-old face.
Emma Stone, Eva Longoria… Of course I can’t be 100 per cent certain, but surely their suspiciously youthful faces aren’t the result of injections and good sleep?
And while I can’t name names, walk down Bay Street in Double Bay or Toorak Road in Melbourne and I can clock a facelift within seconds.
We all remember ‘Catwoman’ – the late socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein, infamous for taking plastic surgery to extremes, transforming her face into something almost feline. This is still the image people cling to when they hear the word ‘facelift’.
Pulled, painfully stretched and bloody obvious.
But that’s not what modern facelifts look like. Not even close.
In fact, the best facelifts are the ones you don’t spot at all (unless, as I say, you have the trained eye of someone who’s had one, too).
Technology and technique have come so far that surgeons no longer just pull skin tight around your ears. Modern, deep-plane facelifts work beneath the surface, repositioning the underlying facial muscle and connective tissue – so results look softer and far more natural.
And you don’t need to pay $400,000 or whatever ridiculous sum Hollywood celebrities pay. Most surgeons in Australia will charge about $25,000.
They don’t distort your features – they enhance them. When I woke from surgery, I didn’t look like a cartoon cat. I just looked like myself, only ten years younger. No chipmunk cheeks, no frozen expression, no shiny, overstretched skin.
Just subtly lifted – enough for people to wonder where I’d been to look so refreshed.
‘The one thing about my facelift that makes me ache with regret to this day is all the cash I spent beforehand on less invasive procedures – the ones other women insisted were necessary “tweakments” or “maintenance” – but in reality did sweet Fanny Adams,’ writes Amanda Goff
Anything else you do to your face is a waste of money.
In fact, the one thing about my facelift that makes me ache with regret to this day is all the cash I spent beforehand on less invasive procedures – the ones other women insisted were necessary ‘tweakments’ or ‘maintenance’ – but in reality did sweet Fanny Adams.
This is my message to my female readers: don’t wait until you’re too old to go under the knife after exhausting all other options. Go big earlier and save yourself thousands. Trying to fight off ageing with Botox is like trying to take down an elephant with a pea shooter.
Years ago, I remember a cosmetic nurse warning me: ‘I’m not going to let you waste your money on fillers if you’re thinking of having a facelift. A facelift will do what we try to do but only better.’
God, she was right. I should have listened then!
But like with any miracle cure or treatment, there is always an uncomfortable truth. So heed my cautionary tale – and it’s not about the facelift itself, but what came after.
Facelifts don’t last forever. Eight years, maybe 10, if you’re lucky. And then slowly, the hands of time soften and loosen, and the saggy shift in your jowls that you thought you’d never see again slowly creeps in.
And that, ladies, is why I’ve booked another facelift for next year.
Because once you’ve seen what your face can look like, how it’s lifted and matches the youth you feel inside, it is almost impossible to accept anything less.
And remember: past a certain age, injectables are just delaying the inevitable.
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