Woman, 52, who was 'told she looks sad all the time' now 'looks 20 years younger' after facelift

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A mother-of-two who said her face constantly 'looked sad' has told how she turned her frown upside down after undergoing a facelift.

Krista Alise explained she 'didn't recognise herself anymore' due to the effect the hands of time had on her complexion.

The 52-year-old, from the US state of Florida, said she finally decided to take action after seeing success stories on TikTok of other women who had taken the plunge and gone under the knife.

She said: "I wasn’t super unhappy before, but I just looked sad all the time and people were always asking, 'Are you tired?'

"You have this skin that’s dropping where gravity is pulling it down, and I just didn’t recognise myself anymore.

"A lot of women say the same thing, that they are tired of their saggy neck. It’s almost like this betrayal of our bodies."

Krista revealed she had spent seven years considering turning to cosmetic surgery and originally intended to undergo a neck lift to reduce sagging skin.

Krista Alise said people constantly asked her if she 'was tired' prior to going under the knife (PA Real Life)

The estate agent didn't muck about when it came to researching her options and she contacted various surgeons across the globe - from the Czech Republic to Costa Rica.

But according to Krista, a lot of clinics tried to upsell her, advising her that she'd be much happier with her results if she went for a full facelift instead of just a neck lift.

In February this year, the mum bit the bullet and booked in with a certified, English-speaking surgeon in the Mexican city of Tijuana to get the ball rolling with her transformation.

She ended up getting a deep plane facelift and neck lift, along with a handful of other procedures, such as a brow lift, lip lift and eyelid surgery.

All in all, it cost the estate agent $15,700 (£11,550) - including her return flights, a hotel for her to reside in prior to the surgery and a week-long stay at a recovery centre where she received round-the-clock care.

A deep plane facelift works with deeper layers of tissue than a typical facelift, reportedly leading to more long-lasting results.

Double board-certified facial plastic surgeon Dr Justin Cohen told The Guardian that during this procedure, facial ligaments that 'tether the face and neck down' are released.

She underwent an array of procedures with a surgeon in Tijuana (PA Real Life)

This allows the surgeon to 'lift the entire facial soft tissue layer as a single unit', while he added: "The technique avoids the overly tight or ‘pulled’ look sometimes seen with more traditional techniques."

"It isn’t just a simple lift," Krista said. "They’re reattaching muscle and laying the skin back down.

"In the US, this price would have got me just the brow lift.

"Most people’s goal is not to look like their 20-year-old self, but rather to look the same, just fresher.

"It’s such a strange and personal thing. It’s your face, it’s the thing you’ve been looking at your entire life, and there is a sense of identity there."

She admitted that she looked like she had 'fallen off a bus and been hit by another bus' after coming out of the operating room, as Krista explained: "I looked horrible.

"The first few days following the surgery brought considerable swelling and discomfort. But now I don’t feel disgust when I look in the mirror anymore and makeup goes on like a dream."

The 52-year-old said she feels like a new woman after her deep plane facelift (PA Real Life)

Despite experiencing a 'tumultuous' recovery, Krista is in love with her smoother, tauter look and said the 'things [she] wanted to correct, [were] corrected'.

Her husband, 49, and 21-year-old son weren't too phased by her change in appearance, although her 19-year-old daughter took some time to get used to Krista 'no longer looking like mum'.

The 52-year-old has been told she looks '20 years younger' - and some of her pals haven't even recognised her when they've seen her in public.

"Recently I went to a conference and a woman who had known me for years walked straight past me without a clue who I was," she laughed. "Another said I look totally different.

"Of course, there are negative comments like, ‘You’re still 52, you’re not fooling anyone’, or people asking when I’m going to get movement back in my face, which I don’t understand, as it’s there."

Krista said her surgeon in Tijuana is now fully booked until April 2026, while urging others considering cosmetic surgery to conduct their own thorough research beforehand.

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