Martha Stewart is coming clean, sort of, about the cosmetic procedures that keep her looking youthful. (After all, at 81, she became the oldest person to be featured in Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue.) On a recent episode of her podcast, The Martha Stewart Podcast, the now 82-year-old chats with her New York City dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the cosmetic work she’s had done—plastic surgery not included.
“Everybody is so interested when they see a selfie of me posted on the Internet. So many comments are about my facelift and who did it and when did I have it done and how much retouching is on the photograph, and I just want to set the record straight,” says Stewart.
The mogul has claimed in the past that she’s “had absolutely no plastic surgery whatsoever.” Instead, she credits a healthy diet, green juice, and horseback riding with maintaining her smooth, gravity-defying skin. Her dermatologist backs this up. “You’re a testament to the idea that taking care of your body, taking care of your skin, and doing minimally invasive treatments conservatively and regularly can keep you looking beautiful at any age,” Dr. Belkin says on the podcast.
What she does admit to is injectables, starting with neuromodulators to relax certain facial muscles. “I try to reduce downward pull on the face,” says Dr. Belkin, saying that he also uses it to reduce banding on her neck. He also injects it minimally on the forehead. “I don’t like that at all,” Stewart replies. “My eyebrows go up in a V, and that looks so unnatural.”
Additionally, Stewart uses a combination of hyaluronic acid–based fillers as well as biostimulatory fillers, such as Radiesse and Sculptra, in her cheeks to restore volume via her own collagen production. She also does laser skin resurfacing, such as Fraxel. “Here in that V of your décolleté—that sun damage, a brown spot here or there—those lasers are really effective,” says Stewart, who adds that they can be painful. (She then goes on to say that Pilates complements the laser results in keeping her décolletage taut and smooth.)
Then there are the skin-tightening procedures; Dr. Belkin recalls using both Sofwave and Ulthera, which use ultrasound technology to tighten skin, on Stewart. “We did do Ulthera, I remember that,” she says.
Important to note from this list is that “it’s not cutting me and sewing me up,” Stewart says. “It’s really preventative.” Not everyone is buying Stewart’s claims though. Registered nurse Dana Omari-Harrell (who runs the social media account @IGFamousbyDana) is one of many who question Stewart’s claims, breaking them down in an Instagram Reel. In it, she shares side-by-side photos of Stewart, both 10 and 25 years apart, pointing out how her brows and lips are higher and her eyelids more visible. She also zooms in on a close-up of Stewart’s lips, during which Omari-Harrell highlights what she calls an undeniable lip lift scar.
We may never know the truth about what celebrities really do behind closed doctors’ office doors. For now, we’ll just have to add Pilates and horseback riding to our skin-care routine and hope they make us look as good as Stewart in our 80s.
