83-Year-Old Gets Breast Implants To Stay Young

Plastic surgery is being opted for increasingly by older people, with 83-year-old Marie Kolstad being the latest person to take the plunge.

Ms. Kolstad, a widow who lives in Orange County, Calif., is the mother of four, the grandmother of 12 and great-grandmother to 12, underwent a three-hour breast lift with implants on July 22, coming to a cost of about $8,000, reports The New York Times.

Reasoning why she underwent the procedure, at her age, she said, “your breasts go in one direction and your brain goes in another.”

“Physically, I’m in good health, and I just feel like, why not take advantage of it?” said Ms. Kolstad, who works full-time as a property manager.

“My mother lived a long time, and I’m just taking it for granted that that will happen to me. And I want my children to be proud of what I look like,” she said, The New York Times reports.

She figured her family wouldn’t approve, so she didn’t tell them about the surgery until a day before she was scheduled to go under the knife.

Kolstad is not unique. The New York Times reports that a growing segment of the population, namely seniors, is opting for age-defying plastic surgery like never before. And Kolstad told the newspaper that her doctor has patients even older than she.

One NY plastic surgeon said nearly ten percent of all procedures involve people over 65.

Kolstad, told the Times that it wasn’t about lifting her boobs as much as it was about lifting her self-esteem. “It was more about looking in the mirror and liking who I am,” she said.

And she likes what she sees. “I just wanted nice ones,” she admitted.

Kolstad said she was always a 32A, but now boasts a 36C figure. She was unreachable at the moment for further comment — she is currently rocking a bikini on vacation in Hawaii.

Kolstad is one of many septuagenarians, octogenarians and even nonagenarians who are polishing the sheen of their golden years with a little help from the plastic surgeon.

Gilbert Meyer, a retired film producer in Boynton Beach, Fla., who gave his age only as “over 75,” decided to have some work done last year.

Meyer saw Dr. Jacob Steiger, a facial plastic surgeon in Boca Raton, Fla., for an eye and neck lift, spending $8,000, The New York Times reports.

“I was looking at myself in the mirror and didn’t like what I was starting to see and did something about it,” Mr. Meyer said. “Why not look as good as you can when you can?”

According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, in 2010 there were 84,685 surgical procedures among patients age 65 and older.