This story has been updated to include additional reporting and new details.
Joan Kron started working at Allure in 1991, at the age of 63. That first year, an assignment on plastic surgery consultations led Kron to get her own facelift. It was love at first lift, and Kron embarked on a 25-year-long, groundbreaking career in cosmetics procedure reporting, at a time when other magazines just weren’t covering the topic. She wrote a book on facelifts (LIFT: Wanting, Fearing and Having a Facelift), and made her directorial debut at age 89 with a documentary on plastic surgery called Take My Nose … Please!. Now, Kron is working on her second documentary, about Botox. Her latest book, The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art: A Memoir of the ’60s is about her life in Pop Art, and comes out this fall. She was a driving force behind one of the country’s first Pop Art exhibits, and worked on projects with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Indiana. We sat down with Kron, now 98, to talk about her own facelifts and brow lift, and everything she learned along the way.
My first marriage, which lasted 21 years, was to a general surgeon. I used to watch my husband operate, in awe. Mostly abdominal surgery. I was a New Yorker, living in Philadelphia, and it was the 1950s. At that time, there was only one plastic surgeon in Philadelphia. I went to a lecture he gave and I distinctly remember my 20something self turning to the woman next to me as graphic slides of a facelift procedure flashed on the screen, and saying, “Not me. Ever.”
Fast forward to 1991, and I am a journalist covering the psychology of appearance for Allure. I was 63, the contributing editor at large, and a veteran journalist—I had been writing for New York Magazine, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and had published three books. We had a weekly staff meeting to plan the next issue, and editor in chief Linda Wells began the meeting by saying, “I’m interested in whether plastic surgeons try to talk potential patients into having surgery they don’t need…even though most of our readers are too young to be interested in surgery. And I’ve already assigned it.” The chosen writer was 35.
After the meeting, I went to Linda’s office and said, “A 35-year-old is too young to understand how a woman feels about losing her looks. I’m the oldest person here. I was married to a surgeon. I’m not intimidated by doctors. And I’m one of the few writers among the staff old enough to need a facelift—not that I would ever want one. Please let me do this.” Linda said she wasn’t calling off the other writer, yet, but “Okay, why don’t you try it.”
The world of plastic surgery in 1991, much more so than today, was secretive. There was no Botox, yet, or cosmetic dermatology—all subjects we would eventually pioneer covering at Allure. There was no Bravo show about Housewives of New York or LA, no Botched on TV, no best-facelift surgeons lists in magazines or online. And celebrities were certainly not confirming the surgeon who did their facelift, or publicly sharing the CCs of their breast implants. So I asked a source—who knew Who had What work done When and Where—for recommendations. We now have so much information at our fingertips, but there’s still nothing better than a personal recommendation.
In a week I had all my appointments set up. My first consultation was with a doctor whom my source told me had done a facelift on a former first lady. When my name was finally called, there was no foreplay. The doctor had me stand facing the mirror of a small medicine cabinet over a tiny sink, while he stood behind me and pronounced my imperfections. And how he could improve them. The one I remember most was, “Oh dear, you haven’t seen your jawline in 15 years.” And, “You’ll have to stop smoking.” I reminded him that in the questionnaire I filled out I explained that I had stopped smoking 30 years ago. He passed me on to his office manager. “That will be $19,500, plus anesthesia, plus hospital fees, plus private nurses.” (Inflation check: $19,500 would be the equivalent of over $40,000 today.) I did not set a date.
