Hey, Girls, Should We All Get Our Necks Done?

A woman I’ll call Helen lives in Los Angeles and works in fashion. On set one day, a colleague told her bluntly, “There’s no separation between church and state.” He was referring to Helen’s jaw and neck. She was horrified. “I’m not about to start contouring,” she thought to herself. “I don’t even wear foundation.” So what was there to do about it? The mere question seemed to open the social media floodgates with surgical possibilities. “My Instagram and YouTube explore pages were so deeply dark,” Helen, 41, says. “My boyfriend made me take a screenshot of it so I could remember this.”

Luckily, she found a sympathetic ear: her friend Lucy, who felt just as insecure about her own church and state. (All the names in this story have been changed — you’ll get why.) After discovering “Yelp meets Reddit for plastic surgery” site Real Self, the two friends vowed to get chin liposuction in a year — enough time to find the right doctor and facility. This time next year, they’d be poolside in Palm Springs, convalescing with bandages upon their necks and daiquiris in hand. It’s a reinvention of the girls trip: Instead of a relaxing sojourn with spas, baths, and massages, you come home with a healed, amended body.

Versions of Helen and Lucy’s cosmetic surgery plans play out all the time in my life: with friends I grew up with, friends I’ve just met, even strangers at the bar. It’s all anyone is talking about. My friend Serena and I fantasize about getting hers-and-hers tummy tucks in Brazil, where plastic surgery is cheap and where she has some family; they can take care of us while we enjoy a couple weeks in the sun, recovering away from our children.

Justine, a butch lesbian, has big boobs she doesn’t really want, so she talks about getting a reduction and lift, and I tell her, “Same — perky tits for the first time in my life at 40.” We also talk about getting neck lifts together, because our chins slope into our necks in a weird way, and we would love to get lipo in our arms and bellies, though we differ on what we’d do with the fat: I’d love to transfer it to my butt, because my current posterior is a genuine flat board. Justine already has an ass so I’m encouraging her to just toss the lipo’d fat altogether. Donate it!

“Whether it’s getting a lip flip or a $100,000 face lift, surgery is part of the feminine experience in the 21st century.”

There’s an obvious reason so many of us are engaging in this new pastime: Talking about getting work done makes the prospect of actually going under the knife more approachable. “Doing something scary is always easier when you do it with a friend. For that reason, many women, including me, schedule their mammograms at the same time as a friend,” Irene S. Levine, Ph.D., a psychologist who studies friendship, told me over email. “Being with a trusted friend makes any medical experience less intimidating. Discussing plastic surgery with a friend can allay anxiety, provide mutual support, and help both friends make a more reasoned decision.” (Alternatively, Levine says, “there may even be an element of competition, one friend not wanting to be left behind while her friend is improving her image.”)

Yet in all of this talking, there’s one thing I have never done: been even remotely serious about any of it. That’s true of plenty others I plot out procedures with. We’re just participating in the timeless ritual of picking apart our insecurities in the name of bonding and, yes, affirming ourselves. My friends and I have developed a sort of shorthand for pumping up each other’s tires during our plastic surgery chats. For example, I tell Justine she’s super muscular and hot, but I am also down for lipo, and I flatter Serena’s gifts too by telling her I’d die for her tiny perky tits, while still affirming her on that mommy makeover she wants.

It’s like that scene in Mean Girls, except gentler, because the menu of what you can actually do about any perceived flaw could fill a million Burn Books. “Whether it’s getting a lip flip or a $100,000 face lift, surgery is part of the feminine experience in the 21st century,” Minnie, a trans woman, tells me. “So to engage with it also makes me feel feminine.”

Fantasizing about procedures isn’t reserved only for close friends, either. Soraya is a new pal I share studio space with. We go deep on deep planes and regularly swap pics over Instagram of Kris Jenner and Lindsay Lohan’s new faces as we vow to get those same procedures when we’re in our mid-50s. The temporal distance of plastic surgery — something to get done in the future, not right now — makes it easier to dive in, and build intimacy while we’re at it. When I don’t know someone as well, I don’t tell them what cosmetic surgeries I think might be good for them. Instead, I tell them they’re gorgeous and don’t need a thing — but, if they’re talking about cosmetic interventions, I am happy to share my own plans.

It’s like that scene in Mean Girls, except gentler, because the menu of what you can actually do about any perceived flaw could fill a million Burn Books.

As for Helen and Lucy, their chin lipo mission went south from the beginning. The first Beverly Hills doc Helen met for a consultation was unsettlingly pushy about booking a surgery — and then he called her to offer a discount before she’d even left the parking lot. She tried three more licensed surgeons, Goldilocks-style: some were too expensive, some promised too fast a recovery.

The last doctor she saw was the one she was most excited for. But when she got on the video call with him, her dreams of lying in her chin strap by the pool with her friend were shattered. He asked her to pinch the fat under her chin and tell him what it felt like, and he asked her questions no other doctor had asked. “He told me chin lipo wouldn’t do sh*t for me,” Helen says, and that what she really needed was a chin lift — a more extensive procedure way out of her budget. She was crushed.

The one bit of solace? Lucy wasn’t a good candidate for lipo, either. Helen is looking to save money and still get that chin lift in her 50s, but she only plans to get this new surgery if her friend wants to as well. Considering elective surgery “makes me sound and feel psycho,” she says. “So best to do it with someone else.”