Men have curated aspects of their appearance for decades. The clothes they wore. The cars they drove. The image they projected. Their faces, however, remained largely off limits.
Aesthetic medicine wasn’t part of the male experience until recently. Today more men are entering the conversation — not in pursuit of perfection or youth but with a different set of motivations entirely.
The shift reflects something bigger than aesthetics: men aren’t seeking treatments because they’re chasing a younger version of themselves; they’re seeking congruence between how they feel and what their appearance communicates.
Much of the answer lies beyond aesthetic medicine itself. Men are living and working for longer. The same generation that embraced preventative health care is now beginning to embrace aesthetic medicine. Careers now routinely extend well into people’s 60s, while hours spent on video calls, coupled with the rise of social media, have made us more aware than ever of our own faces. Appearance hasn’t replaced competence, but it has become part of how competence is perceived.
Cape Town aesthetic doctor and Eternal You founder Dr Shahra Sattar has seen a marked increase in the number of men seeking injectable treatments over the past few years. What’s changed isn’t the number of men walking through her door, but the conversations she’s having with them.
“The consultation has become less about age and more about alignment,” she says. “Men want their appearance to reflect how they feel. They’re not looking for dramatic change. They want to look like themselves, but the best version of themselves.”
Her observations mirror a broader international trend. The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery’s 2025 survey found that 95% of facial plastic surgeons treated male patients during the previous year, identifying men as one of the fastest-growing demographics in facial aesthetics.
In many respects, men are changing the aesthetics conversation because they’re approaching it differently. The emphasis has shifted away from transformation and towards refinement. Looking after your appearance no longer sits at odds with masculinity. It has become another expression of self-care, sitting comfortably alongside regular exercise, preventative health care and a growing interest in longevity.
That doesn’t mean men have abandoned traditional ideas of masculinity. If anything, many remain acutely aware of them. Rather than asking how much can be changed, the question is often how little. A successful treatment lies in looking like nothing has been done at all.
The consultation is often surprisingly pragmatic. Many men want to understand the science before making a decision. They ask how treatments work, what results they can realistically expect and how long those results will last. One question, however, comes up time and again: will anyone notice?
Underlying the question is a very human concern: not whether the treatment will work but whether colleagues, clients or friends will realise they’ve had it.
The concerns themselves are revealing. Men aren’t arriving with photographs of celebrities or asking for wholesale change. More often, they’re focused on looking less tired around the eyes, softening deep frown lines or restoring volume lost through ageing. The requests are highly specific, with the emphasis firmly on looking refreshed rather than different.
“Most men come in with one or two very specific concerns,” says Sattar. “It’s often the frown lines that make them look permanently stressed, hollowness around the eyes that makes them appear tired, or volume loss that’s changed the way they see themselves. They don’t want a different face; they want to look like themselves again.”
Although consultations often begin with humour, they quickly become surprisingly candid. Beneath the jokes lies a serious conversation about confidence, ageing and how men want to present themselves at work and beyond the boardroom. Yes, men in the dating pool, especially as they age, are feeling the pressure too. It’s a reminder that despite longstanding assumptions about masculinity, men are asking many of the same questions women have wrestled with for years. They’re simply arriving at them from a different place.
For all the progress, one thing hasn’t changed: most men are still more comfortable having treatment than talking about it. Perhaps that’s the next frontier. While men are undoubtedly changing the aesthetics conversation, they’re only just beginning to have it.
Wanted
