Georgia Louise: I’m a Facialist to Hollywood’s Biggest Stars. Here’s Why I Got an Eye Lift at 45.

Georgia Louise is one of Hollywood’s top aestheticians and is a go-to for a host of A-listers. She’s also refreshingly honest about aging, and how she’s navigated her own journey. Here, she reveals why she had an upper lid blepharoplasty at 45.

There are very few phrases I hate more than “aging gracefully.” For me, it’s all about aging beautifully. I’ve been an aesthetician and facialist for over 27 years. I study skin. I’ve made it my mission to preserve my clients’ natural beauty and keep them looking as fresh and youthful as possible. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood come to me to look their best—including Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Aniston. I’m proud of how good they look after seeing me, and I work just as hard on my own skin as I do theirs—because I’m my own best advertisement.

But there are some things even the most sophisticated skin treatments can’t fix. And after I started to get fat buildup on my eyelids, I decided to get plastic surgery to remove it—then live document everything about the procedure and my recovery on social media. Why? Because it felt disingenuous not to be open. I can do a lot to help people look their most beautiful, but when it goes beyond my expertise, why not tell the truth? I believe in the importance of sharing knowledge, and giving women all the information they need to make the decisions they want.

To be completely honest, for a long time I never wanted to do cosmetic surgery. But the negative way I was feeling about myself had built up over a few years. It started during the pandemic, when I began to put myself out there more on Instagram. At the end of a day I’d look back at videos I’d posted and think, Crap, my eyes are really puffy today. I know many people have the same thoughts, but I’m an aesthetician and it bothered me. My mom always used to tell me that my eyes were my best feature, and it was driving me more and more crazy that they no longer were.

At the same time, I was also going through a separation and divorce, I was relocating my business headquarters from California to New York, I was becoming a single mom for the first time, and I was dealing with thyroid disease and type one diabetes. I felt as haggard as I was convinced I looked.

I remember one day thinking, That’s it, I’m done. But I still didn’t start with the surgery route. I called my endocrinologist first, who said it could be Bulging Eye Syndrome caused by the Hashimoto’s disease I suffered from. So I got my tools out of the freezer and would massage my eyes every day. But nothing was changing. Then I spoke to my friend Miranda, better known as the Beauty Broker, who is a cosmetic guru to the stars. She took one look at my eyes and told me, “That’s not a puffy eye. That’s fat, my friend.” I laughed out loud. I’d recently lost 30 pounds (my thyroid issues had made me pile on weight that I’d finally lost through exercise and nutrition), but there I was, likely growing fat around my eyes.

Georgia’s doctor shows her the area he’s going to treat.

Courtesy of Georgia Louise

So given the nature of who I am and the people that I know—I see the best work, obviously, because I treat celebrities, and even though I can’t tell you who’s had what done, I know who’s had what done, and it’s fantastic work and they look terrific—I’m like, I need to go and consult with all these people. So I did.

And after doing a ton of research and consultations, I landed on a reputable plastic surgeon based in New York City. After talking it through he recommended a partial upper lid blepharoplasty. In plain terms, the procedure removes excess fat buildup in the upper eye area—though I affectionately call it my eyelid liposuction. He explained that a partial blepharoplasty would involve him opening up the skin on my eyelid a quarter of the way, plucking out the fat, and then stitching me up again. He cautioned against doing fat removal across the full eyelid, as it could give me too hollow a look and look too overdone, which I didn’t want. I also didn’t want to look like I was trying to get back to my 20s or 30s—I just wanted to wind back five years, to how I looked pre separation, pre becoming a single mom, and pre some of the worst of my health issues.