Pensioners embrace plastic fantastic

The stigma surrounding plastic surgery is vanishing with over 230,000 UK pensioners admitting to cosmetic enhancement, according to research by AXA.

In addition, retired people are so keen to embrace plastic surgery at almost one in ten (9%) would go under the knife or have botox injections if it meant changing something they did not like about their appearance. Furthermore, a quarter of British pensioners (24%) feel that plastic surgery would make them look younger.

The older Britons get the vainer the nation becomes with pensioners showing up younger generations by spending more time on traditional beauty methods too. Eight out of ten retirees (83%) state they always take care of how they dress compared to 79% of workers. Furthermore, almost nine in ten (89%) say that everyone should care about the way they look and almost half (44%) say we should do all we can to look younger.

Despite embracing cosmetic surgery Britain is left trailing behind in the global grey league, led by Australian retires – one in ten of which have gone under the knife.

Pensioners that have resorted to plastic surgery:

Australia 10%
Canada 6%
Germany 5%
New Zealand 5%
France 4%
USA 4%
Spain 3%
UK 2%
Italy 1%
China 1%

Alison Green, spokesperson for AXA says: “It’s interesting to see those over 65 years old are moving away from the more conventional things we would expect them to be spending their pensions on and investing in beauty treatments and plastic surgery to achieve a more youthful appearance. However many of today’s retirees can afford this because they have benefited from a boom in property prices and had good final salary pension schemes provided by their employers.

“Those currently in work, who would like to afford this type of lifestyle in retirement, need to think very carefully about the income they will receive and how they could finance such luxuries. The retirement landscape is changing and people need to take a more ‘hands on’ approach when planning their retirement income.”