For years the conversation about a firmer face led in one single direction - a facelift, an operating theatre, recovery. That conversation has changed. Not because people stopped wanting the effect, but because the industry found a way to charge for the same effect in instalments, without a scalpel.

The latest in the line to try it is the presenter Cristina Pedroche, with Ultherapy Prime - a treatment Paula Echevarría calls "a stapler", which uses micro-focused ultrasound with echography to tighten the skin from the deep layers. The idea is not to pull the skin backwards, but to stimulate collagen production where the body has stopped making it.

What the new generation of treatments actually promises

The goal is no longer described as "tightening". It is described as redefining the oval, improving the jawline, restoring light - what some aestheticians call the "light effect". In other words, the face should look rested, not stretched. The difference between those two outcomes is why the facelift went out of fashion: we all learned to spot it.

The approach splits into several levels. Radiofrequency works on skin quality and firmness. EMFACE stimulates the facial musculature - the technology chosen by Belén Esteban. Focused ultrasound goes deepest and aims at redefining the oval; Jade Mitchell and Elsa Pataky went that route. And increasingly several technologies are combined for an overall result.

Where the limit is

Specialists insist on one thing that sounds like marketing until you look at the opposite example: the expression must remain. "You have to work on the skin, on the musculature and on the deeper structures," is the formulation that keeps repeating. That means not treating the face as one surface to be pulled, but as three systems ageing at different rates.

What nobody says out loud is that this approach is more expensive than a facelift in one key respect - you do not pay once. It repeats. The industry moved from one big procedure to a subscription, and that is called progress. Is it worse than surgery? Most likely not. But it is worth knowing before you start, rather than after the third session.