I first noticed it at a charity ball in London while wearing a sleeveless gown. Introduced to an inexplicably enthusiastic young man, I watched in horror as he shook my hand up and down vigorously and my upper arm flab moved in synchronised waves from elbow to shoulder. After what felt like an eternity, I managed to extricate myself, mortified. I could only hope no one else had seen it.
A week later in the unforgiving fluorescent light of a changing room mirror, I inspected my upper arms and there it was – the indisputable sagginess that comes with age. I was 45, and from then on, all sleeveless items were immediately rejected in favour of those that covered the top half of my arms. It was a case of Farewell to Arms.
I stuck to it for a quarter of a century and only ever wore clothing with sleeves. This is in keeping with the sartorial rule my mother lived by: dress to accentuate your best features and keep your worst ones covered up.
Of course, these days there are surgical methods to turn your less-loved features into your best-loved.
I came to London in 1977 and started having cosmetic surgery in the mid-1980s when I was left a small inheritance. Using the rules of proportion I’d learned in art college, I formulated a plan to reinvent myself.
I had been privileged to see Michelangelo’s La Pieta with my parents at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. It struck a chord and the impression never left me. If Michelangelo could carve a mind-blowing masterpiece from a single block of unremarkable marble, then chipping away at my own face and body to look more like the person I felt inside should be a no-brainer, I reasoned.
As a self-confessed nerd (and member of Mensa, the high IQ society), my research was in-depth and unrelenting. My intrepid fact-finding and well-honed BS detector led me to the very best surgeons and the safest, most effective procedures, as it still does today.
Cosmetic surgery was unusual when I had my first operation aged 32 at a London clinic in 1987. At that time having more than one thing done was completely unheard-of. Starting with a blepharoplasty to open up my hereditary hooded eyes, I embarked on a series of life changing procedures that included a nose job, upper and lower face lifts, laser resurfacing, liposuction, jawbone reshaping, and much more.
Cindy Jackson had her first cosmetic surgery aged 32 at a London clinic in 1987 and says that having more than one procedure was unheard-of at the time
I say, ‘life changing’ because, as Sigmund Freud asserted, ‘anatomy is destiny’. To me, it followed that changing my anatomy would change my future. And it certainly did, in every way imaginable.
Becoming known for having cosmetic surgery was never part of my plan, but all that changed in the early 1990s when I ran into an old journalist friend who failed to recognise me. He asked what I’d done to look so different. When I ran down the list of cosmetic procedures I’d had, he got very excited and said it would make a great story for his newspaper.
At first, I was mortified; my ‘project’ was not something I had ever considered sharing with the world. However, the money he offered me would finance the surgery I still had planned, so I said yes.
Against all expectations, my story ‘blew up’, in today’s phrase, and I became world famous overnight. Countless magazine interviews, television shows and more newspaper articles followed.
As a result of the global publicity I received, people from all over the world began contacting me for advice and information. That’s how my cosmetic surgery and anti-ageing consultancy came into being. Many of my clients were public figures who became friends; invitations to mansions, yachts, and exclusive events followed. Anatomy truly is destiny. Over the past 40-plus years I’ve helped countless people achieve their aesthetic goals.
Today, people are living longer, and the older generation is living life to its fullest. It’s no surprise they want a younger face to go with their younger lifestyles. Many now want a younger body too.
This year I turned 70. I met the writer Hugo Vickers, who’s 74, and as we discovered, being in our seventies is not too late to fall in love. I’m living proof that being 70, to quote Winston Churchill, is ‘not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning’.
Life began at 70 for me in many ways. Three months after meeting Hugo, I told him I was planning to have my arms done.
Cindy with her partner Hugo Vickers, who did not encourage her to undergo an arm lift but didn’t discourage her either
His first reaction was that I was fine as I was. He didn’t encourage me to have the operation, but he didn’t discourage me either. He was confident that with my expertise in the field, I knew what I was doing. He also realised that in later years I would regret not having done it now – as I became more dissatisfied with the way my arms looked.
To me, it was inevitable that there would eventually be a demand for our bodies to match our lifted faces. My older clients regularly opt for breast lifts, thigh lifts, body lifts, butt lifts, you name it. If it can be lifted, we lift it.
I am far from alone in wanting my arms to look as youthful as my face. Arm lifts are undeniably the new face lifts among my clients. The better and more natural looking your face lift turns out, the more mismatch there is when there are saggy old arms a little lower down.
While a lot of older women do not wish to wear micro-mini skirts and no longer feel comfortable in low-cut tops with ageing cleavage on display, arms and shoulders are another matter altogether; it’s not considered particularly racy or ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ to show them. Always wearing sleeves in the increasingly warm summers or on holiday gets hot and uncomfortable too.
On the other hand, if your upper arms resemble those of a flying squirrel and you could almost go hang-gliding using only your bingo wings, you may feel more confident keeping them under wraps.
Sleeves aren’t a problem-free solution, however. Over time, they get increasingly tighter and more uncomfortable as arms get fatter and flabbier. It may be necessary to go up a size or two in tops and dresses to get bigger sleeves. This introduces a new mismatch: clothes that fit the arms but are too big everywhere else.
Why not just firm them up with exercise? I already do weight training to maintain muscle tone and bone strength. So I asked a personal trainer about adding heavier weights to build muscle in my upper arms to fill out and firm some of the hanging skin. He inspected my arms, asking me to move them into various positions as he poked and prodded. ‘There’s hope!’ I thought to myself. But it was only fleeting. His professional assessment – or damning verdict – was: ‘You’d need muscles bigger than Popeye to fill out that much skin. Even if you could gain such a large muscle mass, which is unlikely, it would look ridiculous on a slim, feminine woman like you.’
After momentarily picturing myself with Schwarzenegger-style bulging biceps, I realised there really was only one option – the one in which I am an expert.
Cindy’s arms before her arm lift surgery, which cost £15,000 and involved a fat transfer to her hands
Cindy says the surgery allowed her hands, pictured before surgery, to be rejuvenated by plumping up the wrinkled skin and filling in the crevices between the tendons and veins
The surgical solution to combatting the triumvirate of unsightly upper arms, global warming, and increasingly tight sleeves, is a brachioplasty, or arm lift.
Costs vary according to where it’s performed and which technique is used. I had an extended arm lift with fat transfer to my hands, costing £15,000. ‘Extended’ means, instead of the standard elbow-to-armpit incision, mine started at my inner elbow and ended halfway down my ribcage. That allowed the surgeon to address the wedge of underarm fat that hangs over the sides of the bra looking like an extra boob trying to escape sideways – or Yul Brynner in a headlock.
I knew exactly where to go for the surgery and was fully confident in the procedure and the outcome. People always say to me that I must be used to having surgery and take it in my stride. However, I am still a vulnerable patient, and like so many others, I have a degree of trepidation about going under general anaesthetic. But as an insider, I knew that statistically the odds of everything going perfectly were overwhelmingly in my favour.
That offending underarm fat did not go to waste. It was recycled and repurposed. After being harvested from my arm pits, it was injected to the backs of my hands, right up to the knuckles, to rejuvenate them by plumping up the wrinkled skin and filling in the crevices between the formerly prominent tendons and veins.
It was completely painless, but my hands were quite swollen for about two weeks. The final result has taken years off them. They always say you can tell a woman’s age by looking at her hands, but not in my case. I call it my hand job with fingers included.
My brachioplasty plus hand job were done at the end of April in London as a day case. I arrived for the four-hour surgery in the morning. Hugo drove me home that evening; you are not allowed to get behind the wheel of a car for 24 hours after general anaesthetic. Driving is also out of the question for a period of two weeks after a brachioplasty.
A strip of skin measuring 12cm at the widest part was excised from the underside of each arm. There were no visible stitches; they were all on the inside and dissolvable, so none had to be taken out at a later date. I was given an incredibly tight compression garment to wear 24 hours a day – except when showering – for several weeks. It looked like a size zero black bolero and helped keep swelling down while supporting the incisions.
There wasn’t much pain – as long as I kept my arms still. Moving them normally was not possible for the first ten to 14 days, so I needed a lot of help at home with things like food prep, lifting anything heavier than a cup of coffee, and getting dressed. Thankfully, Hugo had kindly blocked out that week in his diary to be at my beck and call. That was extremely generous of him considering his latest book, Queen Elizabeth II, A Personal History, had just come out two weeks before.
Although he was in constant demand for interviews and personal appearances, Hugo navigated his work schedule around caring for me. One moment he was live on Zoom elegantly discussing the British Royal Family on American television; the next he was helping me (cosmetic surgery royalty) wrestle a stubborn compression garment into submission.
During more relaxed moments, I love listening to loud rock music while Hugo is reading at least one book. My headphones make it possible for us to occupy the same space while pursuing different interests together.
It is said that successful biographers must have a good bedside manner, and I certainly saw that side of Hugo after my surgery. He showed endless patience and nothing was too much trouble. Being very independent, I’m not accustomed to having everything done for me. But in this case, I had no choice in the matter. I must say that it’s amazing just how quickly you can get used to that!
My recovery time sped by. Almost before I knew it, six weeks had passed and I could confidently go out wearing sleeveless clothes for the first time in more than 25 years. The unusually hot summer means I have not worn sleeves since the middle of May. I have also done plenty of shopping for new clothes, since I hadn’t bought anything without sleeves since the nineties.
Six weeks after surgery, I was able to resume weight training. I’m beginning to see the muscle definition that had been buried for decades under fat and loose skin. And – for the first time in my life – I’m getting compliments on my arms!
Having been deeply involved in cosmetic surgery for more than 40 years, I marvel at the progress I’ve witnessed over the decades. Arm lifts used to be known for producing obvious scarring, which was off-putting to a lot of women. Today, the scar placement is such that no one can see it unless I raise my arms. I avoid bidding at auctions and hailing taxis. No evidence of surgery shows from the front, the side, or behind. After around six months, the scars will fade to near invisibility.
I could not be more thrilled with the results of my extended brachioplasty and hand rejuvenation combo. After hearing so many of my ecstatic clients rave about their own arm lifts in recent years, it was only a matter of time before I joined their ranks. Now I too, finally have the right to bare arms!
For info about Cindy Jackson and her consultancy, visit cindyjackson.com
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