The Scottish Mail on Sunday - You
The first lady of face-lifts
Pioneering plastic surgeon SUZANNE NOËL was also a fervent feminist who believed that the way to empower women was to help them stay beautiful, says Virginia Nicholson
er name is not well-known. Perhaps that’s because people find it difficult to make sense of someone whose passionately held ideals seem to be so at odds with her career. For France-born Suzanne Noël, who in the early 1900s became the first female plastic surgeon, was a fervent feminist, whose views were announced to the world on a lapel button that read Je veux voter (‘I want to vote’ – Frenchwomen didn’t gain the vote until 1944). And yet her speciality was face-lifts. Noël took a simple view: women were an oppressed sex, judged on their looks – and treated unfairly once those looks faded.
There is no evidence that Noël herself ever had cosmetic surgery. Petite, pretty and blonde, she was intelligent, cultured and determined. In old age her hair was snowy white, and she retained a well-dressed and dignified appearance.
Noël was born into a middle-class family in 1878, a time when a woman’s only security was marriage. Society was a ruthless marketplace in which the main currency was beauty. This world was hardwired to favour a youthful appearance over age and perceived ugliness – wrinkles could mean poverty and hardship.
Noël learned about hardship firsthand. She was to be married – and widowed – twice, and in middle age was left to fend for herself. But her thirst for knowledge had already given her the means to do so.
In 1905 she gained a university degree in chemistry and natural sciences; she then
Hstudied medicine, qualifying in 1913. During the First World War, when she was in her 30s, she practised alongside medics performing reconstructive surgery on men disfigured by war injuries. And from the 1920s, when she first established her own cosmetic-surgery practice, she set out to redress the built-in prejudice against ageing women.
Now regarded as a pioneer of face-lift surgery, Noël’s innovations include the ‘mini’ face-lift, performed under local anaesthetic; the craniometer (a tool to ensure face-lifts were symmetrical); and special incisions to reduce scarring. Her ‘mini-lifts’ took three hours, during which time she’d often chat with her patient. While surgeons now use general anaesthetic, and prefer staples to stitches, the essentials of this pioneering op have hardly changed.
Noël was also what we call now ‘patientcentred’ to a surprising degree. She practised a ‘Robin Hood’ payment policy, charging
those who could afford it more and in cases of need, performed operations for free. Take two examples of face-lifts she carried out on women, both probably in the early 1920s.
The first was that of 46-year-old Madame Moulin, a comfortably off lady of leisure – until her husband ran into debt and abandoned her and their child. She had no skills, but eventually got a job in a restaurant. One day her manager told her she was looking tired, and sent her on indefinite unpaid leave. Today this would be described as ageist constructive dismissal, for it was clear she would not be asked to return. The distressed Moulin went to see Noël, who did two operations on her, first tightening the skin in front of her earlobe, then improving the look of the loose folds around her nose by ‘reefing’ in her hairline (another technique still used by surgeons today). On the day of the second surgery, Moulin was well enough to return to her
Her ‘Robin Hood’ policy meant free operations for those in need
manager, who asked straight away when she could resume work. Noël shared her delight: ‘She immediately told me the good news and embracing my hands and crying, she said, “I hold the hands that took ten years off my age”.’
Another of Noël’s cases was 60-year-old Madame Vidal. She came to see Noël in despair after her employer at a luxury-goods company fired her due to her fading looks. Her countless job applications had all been rebuffed with the same lame excuse: ‘We’ll let you know.’ She never heard back. Noël agreed to operate. On the day she removed Vidal’s stitches the patient fainted – not because of the pain, but because she had not eaten for 48 hours. Noël served her lunch and refused payment. ‘The next day she was able to find work… This is truly the best compensation a surgeon could receive.’
A hundred years on, employment legislation has redressed some of the balance, but in other ways we haven’t shifted. Women are still judged by their appearance.
But can a woman perform face-lifts on another woman – as Noël did – and still claim to be opposing the patriarchy? Can you have a face-lift and still be a good feminist?
Many feminists argue that plastic surgery is a symptom of inequality – a needless intervention – and that we should ‘love ourselves’ rather than go under the knife. This strand of feminism believes in opposing the beauty standards imposed on women by men. In 2021, 78 per cent of cosmetic-surgery consultants were male, while in 2023 the UK market for cosmetic surgery was estimated at £2.3 billion – with its male practitioners growing wealthy on the proceeds of female insecurity. And despite the ‘body positivity’ movement, which celebrates plus-size models, at least a third of us remain uncomfortable with our appearance.
Social media and particularly Zoom have made us more looks-conscious. Of the 31,057 cosmetic procedures in the UK in 2022,
93 per cent were on women. Most popular were breast augmentations, while face/neck lifts came seventh, with the figure for face-lifts – 1,640 – up 92 per cent on 2021.
Many who have ‘work’ done claim it restores their confidence. ‘People aren’t having surgery to win someone’s hand in marriage, they’re doing it for their inner self,’ says Dr Bryan Mendelson, author of In Your Face, a professional’s view of cosmetic surgery.
Self-empowerment through face-lifts may be a kind of feminism, but it’s not the sort Noël would have recognised. Although she was driven by compassion, the fact that – in a discriminatory society – older women were financially disadvantaged was also a motive. ‘Aesthetic surgery… may be a luxury for the rich woman, but for the working woman it is a necessity,’ she wrote.
Noël believed in a woman’s right to beauty. She knew that wanting an attractive appearance was not just vanity. It wasn’t about their ‘inner self’, either. It was about money, status, dignity and the power balance in an unjust world, and she had the skills that could help compensate for ingrained patriarchal discrimination. For Noël, face-lifts were the reinstatement of the power balance between the sexes, and of gender equality. Face-lifts were feminism.
All the Rage: Power, Pain, Pleasure – Stories from the Frontline of Beauty 1860-1960 by Virginia Nicholson (Virago, £25*) is out now