The honest truth about life after plastic surgery (by an anti-aging expert who’s had 12 procedures herself): Here are the VERY surprising secrets about life after a facelift

I was a nerdy, plain and unremarkable teenager when I decided I wanted to change the way I looked. Although, a Mensa member with a genius-level IQ, I’d always known that, for women, beauty is power.

So, in my 30s, when I inherited nearly £50,000 (£150,000 today) I began to spend it on making the very best of myself with the first of 12 full-scale cosmetic surgeries, including jaw and nose remodelling, face, neck and eye lifts plus liposuction. By 1999, I was being called the ‘human Barbie doll’ making headlines worldwide.

I’m 68 now but am often assumed to be decades younger and an aesthetics consultant to the A-list. CEOs, celebrities, aristocrats and public figures from around the globe come to me for advice on what to have done and by whom. I know the leading international surgeons – and a good deal of Hollywood.

I also know what happens after you’ve had surgery. I’ve held many well-manicured hands through the process. Of course, I’ve been there myself, and I’ve seen just how radically everything can change for the women, and men, post surgery.

The reality is, while I know just how life-enhancing gifting yourself a beautiful face can be, there are drawbacks you should be prepared for. From friends rejecting you and jealous husbands, to feeling bad about your body and, well, the sheer cost of it all.

Here then is my guide to the surprising social and emotional side-effects of going under the knife.

Other women will be jealous

One client of mine had spent two intense years nursing her husband through a terminal illness and, unsurprisingly, looked very sad and exhausted. She was only 52, not an old woman, but she looked it. She was beaten down, defeated and her hair had turned grey.

We wiped all that away and made her look young and pretty. She had the works: nose job, a full face and neck lift, eye lift. We took about 25 years off her face.

Just weeks afterwards, however, she got back in touch to say men were staring. She really struggled with the change in people’s reaction to her and the surprising amount of male attention she got, which she found frightening initially. Women stared too – and not in a friendly way.

It was like she’d been used to driving an old Fiat 500 and suddenly got the keys to a brand-new Ferrari, but didn’t know how to drive it. After half a century with one face, it took a while for her to adjust to the new one.

All at once she was beautiful, with lots of money in the bank from her deceased husband’s life insurance, and single again after being married for 32 years. It was like stepping from one life into another Attraction is indiscriminate. After surgery, you’ll attract jealousy, admiration, even hatred. You’re going to experience everything. But that includes love and that’s ultimately what happened for her.

Like so many people I work with, this woman was consumed with the idea of her transformation. Clients like her spend months on the planning, the process and the recovery period. But what they don’t consider is what happens after they get the new face.

I have to explain to them: ‘This is what pretty women experience and you’re now a pretty woman.’

What really bothered this client, though, was how other women reacted. She had the sort of beauty men wanted to possess, and women want to embody, and a lot of the haters were other women. Jealousy and envy often come from women who claim they will never have surgery.

…and your husband might be too

This is incredibly common and often occurs when a woman wants to have cosmetic surgery, but her husband is dead set against it. That’s why a lot of women play down what they’re having done, saying: ‘oh, it’s only a small tweak’ when in fact they’re having the full works.

He knows more men are going to look at her, but he may also be concerned that his colleagues’ wives will be jealous. Then there’s the added worry that it will be botched, and people will stare for all the wrong reasons.

What comes first is often the threat to him of her new beauty, of her looking more attractive than him when they started out on the same level. Science calls it ‘the matching hypothesis’ and it explains why so many models date rock stars – they are perceived as having equal levels of desirability and attractiveness.

You can create anything you want with surgery but you need to think very carefully about what you want to look like and the effect it will have, writes Cindy

I always advise female clients to consider their husbands’ feelings and concerns – men need to be reassured that this isn’t going to ruin their marriage. She’s not going to run off with the gardener, although, yes, when the postman or workmen come to the house, naturally they’ll pay more attention to her.

Everyone is having surgery these days and it doesn’t mean there’s a problem in your marriage, but you may need to convince your husband of that.

I’ve never had a female client who left her husband post-surgery unless the surgery was part of her exit plan. And that does happen. Women have their own money these days, so they don’t have to ask permission.

You’ll lose some friends – and gain others

I see this often. Girlfriends may reject you for becoming younger looking and more beautiful. Whenever you do anything that takes you beyond your social group’s shared history and values – including the level of effort women put in to look beautiful – then you no longer belong.

When you move up the rankings in beauty, you also do so in terms of power. Suddenly your beauty takes you to places you couldn’t have gone before. More doors will open for you. You’ll have new opportunities and that can cause deep envy.

It works the other way too – your social ranking can diminish if you get too fat or ugly. I liken it to suddenly becoming very poor or very rich.

Social and friendship dynamics change if you suddenly rise too high or sink too low. Beauty is like cash in the bank, and society will always treat you according to how much you have.

But entry to this higher-ranking new world also requires you to have the correct manners, an appropriate wardrobe, and the right conversation. You can have a beautiful face and still not be invited to the top table.

I knew that with the right face and body, I could have the professional opportunities, the income and the social connections too.

I changed my life by having all my surgeries. I know what it’s like to be the same person inside, but to present two different visual versions of yourself to the world.

You are treated completely differently in every way. There is no comparison. If you’re in a position to gain such advantages, why not?

You might be broke

Want results? Expect a £30,000 hole in your bank account. This is an absolutely entry-level cost for a midlife woman looking for a full face, neck and eye lift in the UK.

The kind of transformation I had (including jaw and nose reconstruction, face, eye and neck lifts, laser resurfacing and liposuction) would cost perhaps a quarter of a million pounds today. However, the procedures I would choose would be different, because technology has moved on so much.

…as you’ll spend far more on everything

Changing your face will change your life. This is an investment, so of course you’ll spend more time looking at it and thinking about what’s next.

You’ve paid a lot of money for this face, people are giving you lots of positive feedback. It’s your identity now so you are going to be critical of any changes and you’re going to want to look after it.

Expect to spend more time, and money, on your hair, make-up and wardrobe. There may be fancy spa treatments and gym membership costs when there were none before.

Cindy says Cosmetic surgery has changed her life for the better in so many ways, but good health comes first, so she doesn’t take unnecessary risks

It’s a domino effect. If a woman gets a facelift, she’ll automatically start shopping for clothes designed for younger people without even thinking about it. She’ll normally upgrade or change her hair to a more flattering, youthful style.

It might not all happen overnight, but it eventually adds up to paying much more attention to, and money on, what you see in the mirror.

I can wake up some mornings and feel my age, 68. But then I look in the mirror and see someone decades younger so therefore I act and dress accordingly.

With the best natural-looking surgery, older clients never end up looking like an old woman with a facelift.

It used to be easy to guess people’s ages, but not any more. Today, older women are really looking after themselves. Their age-defying surgery blends in seamlessly, so the deception is complete.

Shhh… you don’t have to tell everyone!

The question that all my clients ask, without exception is, how can I keep it a secret? You can beat them half to death and they won’t admit to having surgery.

I’ve seen my clients in the media enthusiastically claiming they’ve never had anything done. They want to be known for their beauty, not the number of operations they’ve had. To give away your secrets is to lose your power.

After I went public with what I had done, taking part in many in many TV and media interviews across America, Australia, Japan, Europe and South America, I faced a lot of harsh criticism.

I even received death threats. (I still get trolled, but so does everybody else these days.)

People are far more accepting of your beauty if they believe you were lucky enough to be born that way. My clients are acutely aware of this, so they keep their aesthetic procedures a closely guarded secret.

Some women don’t want their husband to know. They’ll wait until he’s away on business and then have it done.

One client had a major facelift but told him she’d had her wisdom teeth out. That accounted for the swelling but not the stitches down the side of her face, so she hid those under her hair.

He was none the wiser, and she got away with it.

She didn’t want him to know because they were having a power struggle, and he would never have agreed to her having a facelift.

She looked stunning, while he was rather fat (but also very, very rich. He even paid for her cosmetic surgery without even realising it.)

A rich but physically unattractive man and a beautiful woman is an age-old dynamic where money is traded for beauty in an unspoken contract. We’ve all observed it.

In my experience, there are three main attitudes rich men have toward cosmetic surgery.

There’s the man who wants to control everything – his business, his family and his wife, including her level of attractiveness. Since beauty is power, he does not want her increasing her power beyond his.

Then there’s the type who wants a trophy wife and will actively encourage his other half to have surgery. He likes to show off his woman and dress her up like a doll in designer clothes, so he’ll be very supportive of her looking as gorgeous as possible for him. Most women in that position are very happy, as long as he’s a nice guy.

This type of man also knows she reflects positively on him and is a valuable asset when it comes to society events and entertaining clients and their wives.

Lastly, there are wealthy men who also want to look the very best they can. Plenty of wealthy couples are equally enthusiastic about having surgery and regular aesthetic treatments. They enjoy looking younger and more attractive for each other, and for the glamorous life they lead.

Get it wrong, and you’ll look cheap

If you have duck lips and huge breast and bum implants, then people will question your intellect, and frankly so would I.

If you’re going to be a porn star, great, that’s what you want. If you want to walk into a board room or move in old-money circles and be taken seriously, just forget it.

You can create anything you want with surgery, but you need to think very carefully about what you want to look like and the effect it will have.

What look is going to suit the place you want to be? And how will that particular look age? Is it merely a trend? Will you be out of fashion by this time next year?

Remember, a great face needs a hot body!

Just like when you decorate one room and the rest of your house suddenly looks old and tired, you’ll really notice the difference.

It’s a bigger deal to work on the body than it is the face, as it’s a much larger surface area.

For me, a healthy body is in good shape with a higher muscle to fat ratio – and that means regular exercise and eating well.

You must put in the hard work with your body; there aren’t the surgical short cuts to get a convincingly firm young body that there are with the face.

There are laser treatments to smooth and tighten body skin tone or you could opt for a thigh lift, where the surgeon will make an incision in your groin area and pull the thigh up like a stocking.

Like a tummy tuck, it can be a painful procedure, and you have to limit certain movements for a while afterwards, the recovery period can be several weeks and it will set you back around £20,000-25,000 in the UK.

If you’re having a full arm lift, the surgeon will normally cut from the elbow to the armpit and then take out the whole lower swathe of skin, adjust the position of the muscles underneath before sewing it back up.

Breast implants are fairly straightforward, but I’m not a big fan of implanting foreign materials into the body, so wouldn’t have them myself.

Implants of any type cause an immune reaction. I actively work toward a long healthspan and watch my levels of inflammation.

Cosmetic surgery has changed my life for the better in so many ways, but good health comes first, so I don’t take unnecessary risks.

• As told to Jade Beer
• For information about Cindy’s consultancy and to download her book, How Not To Get Botched, visit cindyjackson.com.