I am older than Gloria Steinem and younger than Helen Gurley Brown, and until recently, when cameras became my enemy, I was certain I would never do it—plastic surgery. Like many women, I defused my feelings about the subject by joking about it and condemning it. But deep down, I was fascinated by this rite of passage—complete with its surgeon-shamans, secret-society membership, scarification ceremony, cult of bravery, period of social withdrawal, and dramatic reentry with a younger woman's visage.

There are more than 100 accredited plastic surgeons in New York and probably a dozen with world-class reputations. How do you choose among titans? Cross-referencing recommendations from my dermatologist and the opinionated beauty underground, I make appointments in November with four "Park Avenue" surgeons I'll call Drs. W, X, Y, and Z.

My first consultation is in mid-December with Dr. W, rumored to have operated on a former First Lady. I ask my husband to keep me company. "I'm just doing research," I insist, not fooling him for a minute.

Dr. W's softly lit waiting room is contemporary. Camel-colored sectionals line facing walls. There is no place for coats. I am given a form: Name, Address. Occupation ("Journalist," I write, as I will at all my appointments). Insurance (irrelevant for what I want). Do you smoke? ("Quit smoking 30 years ago"). Etc. The fee is $150, payable in advance.

After 20 minutes, we are led (lugging our coats) to a modem treatment room. "You're not really serious about this," says my husband, uneasily scanning the surgical paraphernalia.

"We'll see."

Finally the doctor, dynamic and professorial, enters and shakes hands. I had imagined he'd ask me about my life and my work. Why I wanted this. I'd tell him that it wasn't to save my marriage—my second. (I am absolutely certain my husband wouldn't leave me because my chin was sagging, but he doesn't mind if I look good.) And that I hate the stranger in my mirror.

Then the doctor would tell me I was an attractive woman who didn't need anything he had to sell.

In my dreams! There is no foreplay whatsoever. He directs me to stand in front of the small mirror over the washbasin: "Let's see what you need." He grabs the flesh of my upper eyelid and pronounces it "crepey. We can cut that out. The lower lid is not bad, but we can take a little out." Next the neck. "Lord, you haven't seen your jawline in years. We can lake all that fat out, do a little liposuction under your chin. Tighten the neck muscles. Pull up the cheeks. You'll look great. We could raise the forehead, but you'd have a surprised look. Not necessary. You need the classic face-lift. Eyes, face, neck."

He groans when I pull out a picture, expecting a movie-star photo. It's a retouched head-shot of myself taken four years ago. "You won't look that good," he warns. "Come into my office, and we can discuss it comfortably." Silhouetted in front of a wall of textbooks, he gives what seems to be an oft-repeated rundown: "We do it in the hospital under general anesthesia. I have the best anesthesiologist in New York. No complications in 9,000 procedures. The operation takes 2 1/2 hours. You wake up. Your head is in a foam helmet. No constriction. No pain. You stay 24 to 48 hours. The only problem: those little lines on your upper lip. We can get rid of them two ways: One, paint the area with acid, but you get some skin bleaching you may not like. I prefer to use dermabrasion—that's the only thing that hurts. My wife had it. She said she'd never talk to me again if I told patients it was no worse than a bad sunburn. It burnss for a day or two. You can take a little Tylenol."

"I don't know if I want to go through dermabrasion," I say, while trying to figure out which beauty in the silver framed photo strategically facing us, not the doctor, is his wife and which the daughter.

"Think about it," he says. "The lift will last 12 to 15 years. The eyes about eight years. The neck will never look this bad again. Once you remove fat cells, they won't come back. Complications are very rare. Blood clots can come from spikes of blood pressure. We don't allow your pressure to get that high." He guarantees I will have numbness in my face for a month, six months, a year—he can't say. "Just know this: The feeling always comes back."

He describes where the scars will be. He's not interested in seeing my ropy appendectomy scar. "The face heals better than any part of the body. If you decide to go ahead with it," he says, "you'll come back a week beforehand so I don't have to recall what you look like after eight months." And oh yes, he says, "You'll have to stop smoking."

"I stopped smoking 30 years ago. I wrote it on the card." He looks again. "Excellent. Smoking is very bad. Nice to meet you," he says, turning us over to a chatty nurse.

"Surgery can't be performed for eight months, although there are always cancellations. No travel, no eyeglasses or telephone use for two weeks after surgery," she says, giving me instruction sheets and writing the prices (too astonishing to utter out loud) on a piece of paper: Face, $12,000. Eyes, $6,000. Upper lip, $1,500. Total: $19,500, plus a three-night hospital stay (semiprivate, $3,500; private, $3,860). Anesthesia, $1,200. Before and after photos, $150. Private nurses (a must), $260 per eight-hour shift. Payment two weeks in advance (no financing available). At these prices, I think, Dr. W should have a coat closet.

Out on Park Avenue, my husband, looking incredulous, says, "You couldn't pay me to have that done." Whether from shame, pride, or fear of being called vain, most women are as furtive about aesthetic procedures as about abortion. Frequently, even their mates don't know. But if you don't tell, you lose the emotional support of family and the benefit of others' experience. I decide to tell—selectively.

My stepdaughters are dismayed. Their mother died of a brain tumor. "Why do something painful and risky?" rails the youngest. "Shut up and grow old gracefully." My son-in-law, an orthopedic resident, is affronted that I didn't ask for his recommendations on physicians. "Famous doctors aren't always good," he warns. My 91-year-old mother is ambivalent "I wish I had had it done when I was younger," she says. "But you don't need it," she hastens to add, warning that the scars will be evident. Only my son, a photographer, doesn't try to talk me out of it—perhaps because he's seen the truth of my concerns in his lens, and because, as the son of a surgeon, he respects the speciality.

Out of the blue, there's a call from E, a filmmaker friend ten years my junior. She's going to have her eyes done. I am shocked. I bump into S, a journalist, and observe she's never looked better. She confides she had her eyes done recently. When I tell another friend, D, an actress, what I'm contemplating, she owns up to three procedures on her eyes. I feel like I did the day I was initiated into the secret society at camp. Once you are admitted, the scuttlebutt is fierce. Everyone swears by her doctor and knocks the others. One doctor is cold, another snobbish. This one's work is inconsistent. That one is good only for jaws and noses. So-and-so didn't do his own wife—he sent her to his biggest competitor. Have a peel. Don't have a peel. Be careful your hairline isn't changed. Remember the fashion editor who almost died during surgery. Mid-January, I have my appointment with the up-and-coming Dr. X. My husband is again by my side. ("I don't want you to think I am encouraging this, but I want to give you moral support," he says.) The spacious waiting room is designed with a capital D: A mahogany counter trimmed in Wiener Werkstatte style defines the staff cubicle. There is a large coat closet with matching brass hangers, sofas covered in trendy tapestry, flattering lighting, and, on one wall, one of those $8,000 landscape paintings you see at SoHo galleries. On an end table, an engraved brass sign admonishes: No Eating or Drinking in the Waiting Room. In blatant disregard is an open Diet Coke can with a lipstick-tipped straw. Is it significant to my future care that this blemish is being ignored?

I'm annoyed that during our hour-long wait, the staff ignores us while bantering loudly among themselves. "I'd never trust a doctor who hired these people," grumps my husband. Finally, after we wait another 20 minutes in an examining room, the young doctor arrives. Soon all is forgiven.

He is tall and studious-looking. I can imagine him modeling Armani in one of those real-people fashion spreads. "The woman before you asked 3,000 questions," he says apologetically. "Then I'll ask 4,000," I say. "It's your turn now," he replies.

I like him and his approach. Not until he has gone over my medical history in detail does he look at my face. "Tell me," he says, "what don't you like when you look in the mirror?"

"My profile, my chin."

"That's the most common complaint. That can be taken care of," he says, putting his hands on my face for the first time. "A little lipo under the chin."

"I also don't like the sagging jowls."

"A classic face-lift can take care of that," he says, pulling up my cheeks. "The eyes aren't bad—just need a tiny tuck above and a little lipo below. How do you feel about the lip?" he asks. 'We can take care of it with dermabrasion or a peel. That's the only thing you won't like. The face-lift feels a little tight at first, but you shouldn't have much pain. The lip, on the other hand..."

I stop him. "I don't want the lip," I tell him. "I've seen women whose skin looks a different color on the lip."

"Good decision," he says. "I try to talk people out of it, hang the black crepe, but some people can't stand any wrinkles. You can't go wrong by doing less."

I tell him I fear a pulled-up look. Most of the time, he says, that's the result of multiple operations. When I show him the retouched picture of myself, he says, "That's how you'll look. I can give you a decade."

"That's quite a promise," I say, turning to my husband. Even he seems momentarily impressed. I feel my pulse racing. We talk about the down side. Death could occur but is extremely rare. There's also a remote chance of nerve damage. Without looking, I know my husband has turned pale. Me too.

"How do I know you'll do something aesthetically pleasing?" I ask. "We'll show you pictures of other patients." Do you have any questions? he asks my husband, addressing him directly for the first time. After a generous 45 minutes, Dr. X turns us over to his office manager. Dr. X's fee is $12,500 for the face-lift, including the eyes. I'm given printed material and advised to schedule surgery one month in advance. Consultation fee: $100. I feel excited and scared. Dr. X is a possibility.

Two days later, I see Dr. Y by myself. His office is country-club Wasp—wing chairs and Chippendalia. Two secretaries stationed behind a mahogany counter in the foyer seem to give me the once-over. The coats in the closet are high-quality; the women look like they came directly from Le Cirque. Dr. Y's form is the first that asks Husband's Occupation. After a short wait, I am shown to an old-fashioned but spotless treatment room. On the walls are framed news stories about Dr. Y. After 20 minutes, the gray-haired doctor arrives in a white coat. He is polite and professional—not slick, but not country-doctor warm either. I am predisposed to like him: He has a fine reputation and many devotees. He starts the conversation by taking a comprehensive medical history but, like the previous doctors, asks nothing about what I do—which I find off-putting.

I produce my wannabe photo. No problem, he says. "I can take ten years off your face." Handing me a brass hand mirror, he uses a slim metal implement to show me what he would take out of my upper eyelid. Then the lower eyelid. Then he takes my cheek and raises it up gently while tucking my chin under—to show the effect I'd get from the face-lift and chin work. "You'll still have the smile lines, but not so deep. You won't be pulled tight. You won't lose your expression. And you should have a peel or dermabrasion on your upper lip."

"I've seen women with bleached-looking lips, and I don't like the look," I say.

"That's from the peel," he says. "Then we can do a dermabrasion."

"It scares me," I tell him. "You'll regret not doing it," he says sternly, without allaying my fears. "You might as well do it all at once." Assuring me, after examining old scars on my hands, that I'll have no problem healing, he passes me on to the fee lady, who writes: E [eyes], $6,000. F & N [face and neck], $l0,000. Derm [abrasion], $1,000. Done all together: $15,000, plus hospital charges. I ask for detailed material on the lip treatment. When I decline to schedule surgery on the spot, she seems to lose interest. I pay my $100 fee and leave.

Walking home from Dr. Y's office, I obsess about the lip. Three doctors say I need some treatment. Two say I won't like it. One says I'll be sorry if I don't have it. I decide to call an acquaintance who runs a plastic surgery recovery facility in Beverly Hills. I tell her I want the lowdown on dermabrasion. I get it. "Prepare for your lip to swell up to three times its size. The pain can be controlled, but it's uncomfortable for a week, and women get panicky that it will always look terrible. You'll have to wear sunscreen for a long time—or it can become pigmented. The deep [phenol] peel results in a bleached-looking lip." She suggests that I do neither and instead have something no one has yet suggested—have a light peel once a year, as she does.

On the morning of my appointment with Dr. Z, I beg my husband to come with me one last time. "Why should I go?" he says. "These guys never even talk to me." Grumbling, he agrees.

Dr. Z's long, narrow waiting room looks faintly Architectural Digest, with Roman shades on the windows, banquettes covered in plum-colored flame-stitch fabric, and a hanging Japanese screen. The cookies on the reception counter are no temptation to the well-dressed and well-disciplined bodies waiting—several of them accompanied by husbands. The closet is stocked with the by-now-familiar brass hangers and furs. (Who says plastic surgery is the fur coat of the 90s?) The secretaries are as solicitous as flight attendants. One serves tea to a waiting patient.

To the question, "Who will be responsible for the bill?" I write, "Myself." "This is your caper," my husband had warned me.

Finally it's my turn, and we are ushered into Dr. Z's spacious plum-and-blue office. The diplomas are grouped cleverly in two giant frames. The grand cherrywood desk—with no backlog of paperwork waiting-declares a fastidious owner. Enter a nurse to preinterview me (a holding operation, I suspect) and to describe the facility next door, where stitches are removed and cosmeticians provide makeup instruction and products for the postoperative black-and-blue period. Onward, now, to a designer examining room, all lavender-gray plastic laminate and tasteful hardware. I remind myself that the decorator doesn't do the operation.

By now my husband is nearly apoplectic about the long wait. At last the doctor enters with a nurse. He is beyond dapper in a well-tailored navy suit, $100 red silk tie, and spiffy white-collared blue shirt that a valet must have spent an hour pressing. Dr. Z is not tall, but he has a large presence, made larger by self-confidence as full-blown as his Ted Koppel hair.

"Well, I see by your chart you have a nice life," says the doctor with easy charm. Then, to my astonishment, he asks my husband about himself. That small gesture establishes instant rapport. "I see you're a journalist," he says, turning to me. He is the first doctor to ask me who I write for. I tell him. "Oh, I like that magazine." (It's not that I want VIP treatment. I just want to be seen as an individual—not just another anonymous jowled "before" face.)

Why are you here? he wants to know, "I hate my neck. I want to look like this picture of myself."

OK, he says. "Let me tell you what I can do for you. Hold this mirror." He puts his hands on my face like a healer. "We can take the fat out of the eyes, raise the cheeks, get rid of the chin. But now the forehead. We could get rid of these wrinkles with a forehead-lift."

"I'd like to do less, not more," I tell him.

"Then you can forget the forehead. What about the lip?" he asks. "Do you want the small lines smoothed out?" "What do you have in mind?" I ask.

"We can do a light peel," says Dr. Z.

A light peel—just what my Beverly Hills friend had described.

"You don't need a heavy peel or dermabrasion," he says. "A light TCA [trichloroacetic acid] peel isn't painful. You might have to do it again in a few years, but you'll like the results."

I feel myself moving from Maybe to Yes.

"Tell me," I ask, "what would happen if I took the same money and went to a spa for six weeks and lost 30 pounds?"

"It's always nice to lose weight." says Dr. Z, "but do you really think that's going to fix the chin?"

The suppressed emotions of the past months begin to bubble up. "I'm terribly conflicted about this," I say, as tears well up. "I want to do it, but my husband isn't in favor of it. My stepchildren are against it. And I have two terrible fears. One is that I will die on the operating table, which would be so humiliating—to die of a face-lift. And the other fear is that I'll look like one of those ladies with their faces pulled, up tight. I have seen many younger women who have marvelous results. Can I hope to look that good?"

"First," says Dr. Z, "I can't tell you if you should have surgery. That's your decision. But I will say this: Do you think I want you dying on me? I don't want it any more than you do. We don't use general anesthesia. You'll be in a twilight sleep and monitored all the time. You won't remember anything, and you won't feel a thing. It's safer."

As for the tight-face look: "This is what we're going to do," says Dr. Z. "I'm going to have one of my patients call you—she's older than you, and you can see her result. Don't make any decision until you see her."

On to the fee ritual. Face and neck, $10,000. Eyes, $6,000. For the package, $15,000, peel included. The scheduling nurse gives me the only descriptive material I've seen on the light peel. Impulsively, I make a tentative date for surgery. I can't believe I am doing this. When did I make this decision?

My husband and I barely speak till we get home.

"So, what did you think of him?" I ask. "He's obviously a dandy and a super salesman. How do you know he's good?"

That night I get a call from my literary agent, a grande dame and a beauty, many years my senior—how many, I've never asked. I tell her I'm thinking of having plastic surgery and I'm terribly conflicted. She exclaims, "That's marvelous! Do it! This is your outer skin; it needs a nip and tuck. So what? There's no vanity in that. You're like me. You have no age."

Maybe I should grow old gracefully, I say.

"I don't want to grow old gracefully, and I don't accept it," she says emphatically. "I never fussed with my appearance. But I would pass a mirror and say, 'Who is that? It looks like my mother.' I had surgery when I was 65. It made my life better." Her last piece of advice: "If you write about it, don't sign your name."

Craving details. I think of E and wonder how she's doing. I call her on the eighth day after her surgery, and she is giddy. She confesses she had a lot more than her upper eyelids done. Chin too. She had a light peel under her eyes and the scab just came off and it's fabulous, she says. "There was no pain, just some discomfort. I looked horrendous," she forewarns me, full of practical advice. "You must have nurses for at least 24 hours to keep changing the ice packs. Make sure you prepare soft, low-sodium food before you go to the hospital. Salt makes you swell more. Once you decide, do it soon. Tell me when your operation is, and I'll come and put ice bags on."

Mentally prepared, I have only one concern now: Have I chosen the right doctor? My son-in-law checks out Dr. Z's reputation with colleagues. I get in touch with two younger patients of his—both very satisfied. Finally, I get the call from Dr. Z's older patient, the mystery woman. "Hello, I'm Doris [not her real name). Dr. Z asked me to call you. I'm in the fashion business, and I've seen work all over the world. I saw a friend my age—66 then—and she looked fantastic. Dr. Z did her. I took three weeks off from work, and instead of going to a spa as I usually did, I had the surgery done. When I went back to work, my colleagues thought I looked marvelous. 'Those mud baths really did the job,' they told me. I had surgery again eight years later, when I was 74. And I intend to do it again. I'm 78 and look no older than 60."

Frankly, I'm skeptical.

A few evenings later I have the chance to judge for myself when Doris stops by. "I could tell you needed reassurance," she says. I look at her in wonder. Her eyes have no bags underneath. There are no sagging jowls. And her chin and jaw are flawless. Yet she looks totally natural. This cannot be a 78-year-old. She could pass for 60.

"Impossible," agrees my stunned husband.

"I can see you're hooked," he says after she leaves.

Two days later, I confirm my surgery date with Dr. Z.

Dr. Z successfully operated on the author in mid-April.