FACE VALUE
A woman’s cosmetic adjustments can be priced thousands less than her husband’s. The reasons are complicated.
Plastic surgeons are seeing more men join their wives for his-and-hers facelifts. But why might the man’s procedure often carry a heftier price tag?
“At our practice, a deep plane facelift and neck lift for a male starts at $82K; for a female, it starts at $80K,” Dr. Sachin Parikh, a California-based plastic surgeon at L&P Aesthetics, told The Looker.
The few-thousand-dollar difference in starting price is based on multiple physical factors.
“Men typically have thicker skin, denser fibrous tissues, larger facial muscles, and a richer blood supply,” Arizona-based plastic surgeon Dr. Anthony Admire, founder of AdmireMD Plastic Surgery + Skin Clinic, listed.
This makes the surgery technically more demanding and can lead to longer operating times and the need for more anesthesia.
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Dr. Gina Maccarone, cosmetic surgeon and founder of The Surgeonista in Ohio, added that men bleed more during a facelift and also carry a higher risk of post-operative hematoma, a painful pooling of blood under the skin.
“That translates into more meticulous, time-consuming dissection and careful control of every bleeding point,” she explained. “So the case simply takes longer.”
But those are not the only reasons behind the price difference: Plastic surgeons also have to consider shorter hairstyles, which men often prefer, as well as beard patterns.
“Shorter hairstyles and facial hair often mean there’s less natural coverage to conceal incision lines,” Dr. Parikh said.
Rather than hiding incisions within the hairline, as is often done with female patients, he hides them close to the ear for male patients.
Dr. Maccarone explained that careless pulling of hair-bearing skin can lead the beard to grow in places where it is not supposed to, like behind the ear.
Dr. Maccarone said the final price still depends on the procedure’s complexity, not the patient’s gender.
“A petite woman with significant laxity and a lot of area to address can absolutely cost more than a man having a limited lower-facelift,” she said.
Another popular procedure among men, neck lifts, can also come with a heftier price tag.
“Men often require a more extensive deep structural neck lift because of thicker tissues, larger muscles, deeper fat deposits, and more prominent submandibular glands,” Dr. Admire told The Looker.
These factors, he said, can add challenge and complexity to the operation, thus increasing the surgery time.
