I had a $200,000 Beverly Hills facelift — and then shared every intimate detail with the world

On Sept. 5, 48-year-old Beverly Hills aesthetician Tricia Dikes texted a video to her longtime friend and plastic surgeon Dr. Ben Talei, bemoaning the way her aging face might look to a new beau in bed.

“What if I was having sex at my old age and I was on top of someone?” Dikes wryly complained while prodding at some loose skin on her cheeks. “This is what they see. It’s gross. Fix me!”

It was then that the pair decided it was time to turn the facelift plans they’d always joked about into a reality — and not just any facelift, but one of the most expensive, technologically advanced and hotly sought after procedures available in the elite Los Angeles enclave.

Dikes — a single mother who built her skincare business from the ground up over the last 30 years and caters to high-end and celebrity clientele — first met Talei in 2014 when he began practicing in Los Angeles in their shared office space. 

Dikes recalled that she and Talei, who has since gained a reputation as one of the top-performing plastic surgeons in La-La Land, became close “really quickly.”

So when Talei watched Dikes’ “sex partner POV” clip, he agreed to give his friend an AuraLyft — a type of facelift he created that, with fees, would normally cost patients around $200,000 and can reach upwards of $350,000 when additional work is done.