Is Your Nose Making You Look Older?

With time the nose can droop and make the face look older and more mature than it really is but even those who are not experiencing the signs of aging may complain of a nose that gives way to an aged appearance, affecting the face as a whole. ]

When the nose has a droopy tip or a large hump or bump on the bridge, it can instantly equate to an aged look. ­There’s this belief that with age the nose grows. “­The nose doesn’t physically grow larger but, in fact, the tip can droop down due to poor support or project down due to tip cartilages that are too long. When this happens the upper lip can look longer and the overall look is associated with aging,” says Chicago facial plastic surgeon Dean M. Toriumi, MD.

But you don’t have to be middle-aged or even experiencing the first signs of aging to have a nose that makes you look old. “We see younger patients coming in complaining about a droopy nose that makes them look older,” says Oakland, CA, plastic surgeon Ronald Gruber, MD. Most of the time, it’s due to a deficiency in cartilage and structure and support to the tip of the nose—it literally just hangs off the end of the septum. Also, a droopy tip can, “make a high bridge or hump seem more apparent because the tip hangs downward so much,” says Richmond, VA, facial plastic surgeon Michael Godin, MD. Any time that the nasal structure appears to overshadow the rest of the facial features there is a disconnect of harmony and balance. Some patients feel that the larger their nose is, the more accentuated fine lines and wrinkles, especially in the cheek and eye area, become.

Rhinoplasty, or a nose job, can give the face an overall rejuvenated look because it repositions the nose and can lift up the tip. “For many patients, simply repositioning the tip of the nose upward slightly can create a more youthful and feminine look,” explains San Francisco facial plastic surgeon David W. Kim, MD. “In this way, rhinoplasty can serve both to transform and rejuvenate, helping to create a younger, fresher look.” Straightening out irregularities gives way to a more streamlined profile, which can be done with cartilage grafts. These allow your plastic surgeon to rebuild the structure of the nose, adding support to the tip so that it is “picked up” for a more aesthetic look. Sometimes just lifting up the tip of the nose is all that is needed since it lends a shortening effect.