If you win a Golden Globe, you get a shiny trophy, the admiration of your peers, and the honor of having your hard work recognized. But why stop there? Winners (and presenters) at this weekend’s event will also receive goody bags to end all goody bags. Their “thanks for coming!” gifts include a five-day luxury yacht charter through the Coral Triangle in Indonesia, a night at the L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills, and a CurrentBody LED face mask worth nearly $500. (And yes, there is also an actual bag involved—a suede weekend tote with an organic cotton lining from a brand called Atlas Bespoke that looks exceedingly expensive.) Some A-listers can also call dibs on a first-come first-serve list of VVIP gifts, like a $2,000 bottle of tequila, a $15,000 NordicTrack treadmill, or an $11,400 custom Italian suit.
And in a twist worthy of Hollywood—a town where people seem to age backward if at all—there’s another item that can be claimed backstage this year: One Golden Globe winner or presenter will get a facelift with a celebrity doctor.
The procedure that’s up for grabs at the Golden Globes is something called a “stem cell facelift” with Simon Ourian, a Los Angeles-based doctor practicing cosmetic dermatology (he is not a board-certified dermatologist).
Dr. Ourian has a strong celebrity clientele—you might recognize him from Keeping Up With the Kardashians. And this gifted “facelift,” you may be relieved to learn, doesn’t actually involve a scalpel. So, we had to ask: At a value of $40,000, what exactly does it involve? We called Dr. Ourian. He explained that it’s a series of injections—using a patient’s own stem cells—that are designed to lift certain areas of the face. “The term is derived from the utilization of stem cells’ regenerative capabilities to achieve facial rejuvenation effects akin to those of a traditional facelift, but without the need for surgical intervention,” he tells Allure.
Remember that episode of Sex and the City where Samantha has fat from her thighs and butt injected into her face? The “stem cell facelift” starts with a similar process, though as its name would suggest, it’s all about the stem cells derived from a patient’s own body fat. The goal here is not to try to recontour the face with fat—that’s another procedure, called fat grafting, which has been getting more popular as a way to plump up cheeks, temples, tear troughs, even cleavage. In that case, “living fat cells are used as a volumizer, [as you would use] filler,” says Mark Mofid, MD, FACS, a board-certified facial plastic surgeon in San Diego and Beverly Hills and clinical assistant professor of plastic surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. With a “stem cell facelift,” the actual fat cells are removed, leaving behind stem cells that can be injected. The procedure is similar to another you may have heard of—nano fat injections—which use a handful of materials (stem cells, exosomes, peptides) taken from a patient’s own fat “to improve the skin quality of the face,” says Dr. Mofid.
