What is it about male facelifts?

I saw an interview with Sir Paul McCartney this week and couldn’t help noticing the work he has had done. (Perhaps I need to keep up more, apparently this was done last year.) I honestly don’t know the details, but in appearance at least he has now joined the unfortunate (in my opinion) ranks of other notable male facelift misadventures including the Olympic decathlete Bruce Jenner and country music legend Kenny Rogers. It’s sad in a way to see such accomplished people have such obvious work done. The best work always looks natural, and we wouldn’t all be talking about these cases if it did.
So what is it that went wrong? The common denominator is that they look feminized. This typically comes from applying the same strategies to men as with women. It isn’t so much the lower face-we all want a clean jawline and a smooth neck-but the upper face where it really makes a difference. Consider the upper eyelid/eyebrow: In a woman, the ideal brow shape is most often considered to be an arch, lower in the middle and with the highest point just lateral to the pupil. For men, we typically see a flatter eyebrow shape. So when the brow is lifted in order to “correct” a tired look, the brows often come up too much and arch more than they should in men. Related to this is displacement of the hairline; when the cheek and temple skin is pulled up and tightened, the hairline moves up and back, unless the procedure is modified to prevent this. That I think was part of Sir Paul’s problem.
The other treacherous area for men is the upper eyelid. A procedure called a blepharoplasty is usually done to remove excess skin that is hooding and contributing to the tired look. Often some of the fat is removed too, which removes bulges that can be part of the problem. In both men and women however, I think historically too much fat is removed, resulting in a hollowed look which paradoxically makes the patient look older. But especially in men, the look can seem like a vacant stare. Regardless of gender, each situation is different and a variety of techniques need to be considered in order to avoid ending up as fodder in someone’s blog about what went wrong!