C-suite execs are paying surgeons big money to look fresh-faced, approachable, and less irritable

• The C-suite's obsession with youth is manifesting in plastic surgery trends around the world.
• Executives want to look young and full of vitality to assure their teams they are fit for the role.
• Plastic surgeons say brow lifts, eyelid lifts, and eye bag removals are becoming the go-tos for top leaders.

Sean Alemi, a Park Avenue plastic surgeon, said his C-suite clients don't bring in photos of celebrities or other executives as reference. They show him their old photos from 20 years ago.

"They bring in pictures of themselves from their forties and say, 'Look what my face looked like then. How close can we get to this?'"

Alemi, who has been practicing for seven years in New York City, said he's seen a huge uptick in executives from all industries getting plastic surgery in the last five years. That tracks with the overall jump in plastic surgery: Facial procedures rose 25% from 2019 to 2024, according to the American Society for Plastic Surgeons.

Alemi said the percentage of his male clients doubled in the last seven years.

Corporate America is flush with media-friendly young CEOs. Some of the most prominent business leaders in the country are under 50, such as 40-year-old OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, 41-year-old Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and 43-year-old Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

And older executives are paying good money to look less old.

Eye bag removals, facelifts, and brow lifts are holy grails

Looking energetic, young, and full of vitality is the name of the game for C-suite clients, plastic surgeons in New York City, California, and Singapore told Business Insider.

As people age and lose facial volume, their faces tend to sag, Alemi said. He added that C-Suite executives' biggest complaint about their faces is that they look tired, with bags under their eyes and heavy eyelids.

For professionals who have been in the C-suite for decades and are recognizable faces, Alemi said, it's important that they don't look like someone else after surgery. They want to be aged down, not changed into someone new.

He said one way to achieve a fresher look is through small facial tweaks, such as eyelid lifts, brow lifts, and eye bag removals — or a lower blepharoplasty — to lift the face. Most of his treatments are priced between $10,000 and $20,000 per procedure.

Adrian Ooi, a Singapore-based facial plastic surgeon, said he gets top-level clients who come in with depressed central brows because they're always frowning.

"They look very fierce," Ooi, who has been practicing for 10 years, said. "So for a lot of them, they want to freshen that up and appear a bit brighter, a bit more approachable."

Brow lifts at his clinic cost anywhere between 5,000 and 8,000 Singapore dollars, Ooi said, or about $3,900 to $6,200.

Eye bag removal is also big business for Ooi, who performs two to three of these hourlong procedures every week.

Babak Azizzadeh, a Beverly Hills-based facial plastic surgeon, said facelifts and neck lifts are popular among his C-suite clients. His facelifts start from $120,000, while neck lifts cost upward of $85,000.

"Three or four out of 10 people that I see for facelifts or neck lifts are C-suite," he said. "Professionals are getting plastic surgery at a very, very high rate compared to five years ago."

Data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons showed that blepharoplasty ranked among the top five cosmetic surgical procedures in 2024.

The society's 2024 report also said facelifts are a "trend to watch."

"A procedure once seemingly reserved for older generations, now younger patients, especially in Gen X, are reportedly increasingly using it to stay ahead of visible aging," the group said.

Within the 55 to 69 age group, eyelid surgeries and facelifts were the most popular treatments in 2024, with 67,559 and 46,446 procedures performed, respectively.

Gray hairs are not the flex they once were

The increase in demand from executive clients comes as the C-suite is getting younger.

In 2025, the percentage of incoming CEOs in their 60s fell to 18% after hovering around 30% over the past two years, according to a report by the leadership consulting firm Spencer Stuart on S&P 1500 company CEOs.

The average age of new CEOs dropped from 55.8 in 2024 to 54.4 in 2025, the report said.

Azizzadeh said the average age of his executive clients has dropped from the 60s for men to the 40s. For women, it's even younger.

"From the 2000s to now, C-suites are younger," he said. "Particularly in California, one of the leading entrepreneurial environments for technology and AI, there is a very youth-driven culture, especially in Silicon Valley."

Azizzadeh, who has been practicing for over 20 years, said no one wants to report to someone they perceive as "their grandpa or grandma," and "having gray hair is not advantageous like before for men."

"So there is pressure on C-suite to look youthful and attractive, but not look like they've had any work done," he added.

He estimated that about 50% of his clients come from the tech world in Northern California, a figure he said has shot up in the last five years as plastic surgery has become less taboo.

Alemi said that in the workplace, an aging face is an unapproachable face. These executives want to show that they're full of energy and capable at their job.

"People start to feel that they don't look like the elder statesman who's seen and done everything," Alemi said. "They start to look like the guy who's a little bit too old and maybe should retire."