In the cutthroat world of tech, designer Elle Rabinowitz has never been afraid of going neck and neck with young, hot go-getters in the field.
But when she began to notice the baggy skin around her neck last fall — a result of both aging and recently losing 55 pounds on a GLP-1 medication — the 64-year-old dynamo decided it was time to shave a few years off her flaccid façade.
So, she spent nearly $100,000 having her face lifted and her salivary glands shaved down.
“I do video calls every day for work, and I hated being on camera because my neck looked terrible,” the Gramercy resident told The Post. “And people started looking at me and saying, ‘You look angry all the time.’ But I wasn’t angry, I was just getting older.
“I started thinking, ‘OK, I’ve really got to do something about this.’ ”
The something Rabinowitz opted for was a deep plane facelift, accompanied by a brow lift and blepharoplasty. As the pièce de résistance, she got a deep plane neck lift with submandibular gland shaving.
It’s the necks big thing in cosmetic surgery.
As the war against aging rages on — a fight taken on by teenyboppers and billionaire biohackers alike, all endeavoring to retain a youthful mien — submandibular gland shaving is rising as the premier, yet polemical procedure of the day.
It’s an invasive reduction of the salivary glands — walnut-sized tissues beneath the floor of the mouth that produce roughly 70% of unstimulated saliva — for the sake of aesthetics.
To achieve optimal neck contouring outcomes for NYC’s most elite, trained medical professionals such as Park Avenue facial plastic surgeon Dr. Sean Alemi lob off a portion of the organs during rejuvenation operations.
The chop adds an extra measure of tautness to the neck area, giving the chin and jawline a sharp, sculpted finish.
Alemi, who underwent specialized schooling to master the intricate art of gland shaving, exclusively tells The Post that the process has become a key element of his deep place face and neck lift surgeries — ops the doc prefers doing at the same time for cohesiveness.
In fact, he’s performed the cut on 250 patients lucky enough to score an appointment at his haute office. There’s a six-month waitlist to book him for a trim.
His nips, clips and pulls start at $70,000.
But Alemi asserts that gland shaving is not offered as an isolated treatment — meaning folks can’t just waltz in, demanding the little snips and nothing more. Instead, he says the 20- to 30-minute process is a bonus feature of his, approximately, four-hour face and neck enhancements.
“This is a bespoke procedure,” insisted Alemi, an Ear, Nose and Throat expert. “It’s a very nuanced evaluation of each patient’s individual anatomy during which we’re diving deep into the deep plane of the neck, under the platysma muscle, where there are several other very important structures that need to be examined, palpated and sometimes treated.”
After cutting into the anatomy, he assesses “how much fat there is in the deep neck, the bulk of the muscle, and, of course, the salivary glands, which do tend to fall with age,” he explained.
Alemi then uses a specialized device to slice away excess tissue matter.
“It’s a very controversial process because not everybody believes that gland shaving is necessary or appropriate,” he said. “But it’s something that every surgeon should be equipped to do.”
But a faction of physicians, who are not necessarily trained in head and neck surgery, disagree, per trending data.
A survey of the Aesthetic Society, an organization of over 5,000 board-certified plastic surgeons — those not ENT-trained facial plastic surgeons — found that 89% of 60 facelift specialists avoid gland excision primarily “due to concerns about danger to the patient, with 78% deeming it borderline to always unacceptable,” according to a recent study.
Common risks of the procedure include swelling, bleeding and bruising. But researchers warn that rare side effects, such as infections, transient nerve injury and paralysis, salivary fistulas — abnormal saliva leaking — xerostomia, or dry mouth, and induration of the neck can occur.
“Surgeons who advocated not to perform resection perceived complication rates between 0.01% and 30%,” reads the report, which concedes, however, that “with experience, complication rates decrease, and the procedure becomes more effective and predictable.”
Luckily, Rabinowitz, who entrusted Alemi with her transformation last September, only suffered minimal swelling after going under the knife.
She, like most patients, left the operating table wearing bandages and was instructed to temporarily abstain from exercise, as well as noshing on any mouth-watering eats for the first several weeks of her recovery.
Doctors recommend avoiding spicy, salty and sour foods post-op to limit the production of saliva while the glands rehabilitate. So, Rabinowitz gummed down bland bites — think yogurt, white rice, potatoes and steamed veggies — as she convalesced.
Now, months later, all healed and hot, the brunette praises gland shaving as an answered prayer. It came 10 years after she entered a botched chin liposuction with a West Coast physician who failed to give her the ultra-defined profile she now possesses.
“I’m absolutely thrilled with the results,” Rabinowitz giggled, teasing plans to flaunt her head-to-toe transformation in sexy swimsuits on the Jersey Shore this summer. “I used to walk around feeling invisible.
“I don’t feel invisible anymore.”
Anne Kavanaugh, 66, a financial executive in Soho, has enjoyed a similar sense of voguish visibility since getting her face, neck and glands done last July.
“I feel so much better when I look in the mirror,” raved the businesswoman, who complimented her newly perky mug with a ptosis repair — correcting her droopy upper eyelids — and a CO2 skin resurfacing treatment. The entire makeover cost a whopping $99,000.
But Kavanaugh, a former lady wolf of Wall Street, says it was money well spent.
“I have a new level of confidence. My nieces, who are in their 20s, keep saying, ‘Auntie Anne, you’re super snatched,’ ” she chuckled at the youngish term for fabulously firm.
“But I’m not trying to compete with Gen Z or look like a supermodel,” added Kavanaugh, who used photos of herself at 20 as reference images for her surgery. “I just wanted to go back to how I looked previously. And I absolutely do.”
Chloe Hall, 45, an Upper East Side married mother of three, is also feeling like her old self thanks to the lift and shave combo.
“It’s made me feel really good about myself, and I’m a nicer mommy when I feel good,” joked Hall, an Emmy-nominated documentarian.
She got the deep plane face lift and neck lift with gland shaving late last summer after shedding 20 pounds on weight loss meds.
The pricey tweaks set her back nearly six figures.
“At my age, nobody thinks you need [facial plastic surgery],” Hall conceded, adding she saved and budgeted for the revamp. “But I wanted to get it done now, while I’m still relatively young, rather than wait until I’m older and have to undergo a drastic change.”
The subtle, modish modifications have shaved eight to 10 years off her appearance.
And it’s made Hall the envy of her clique.
“My friends initially thought I went away on a great spa weekend or something, because I looked so well-rested and refreshed after the surgery,” she chuckled. “When I told them they were like, ‘Wow, it’s amazing that you look like yourself — but like you’re just waking up from the best sleep of your life.’
“I love my new glow.”
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