You know the photo. Someone takes it at a dinner on Greenwich Avenue, you are mid-laugh, you feel great, and then you see it later and think: I look exhausted. Nothing about the rest of your face has changed much. It is the eyelids — and it is the exact thing upper blepharoplasty, the medical term for upper eyelid surgery, is built to fix.
That heaviness is skin and tissue in the upper lid settling with age and genetics. It reads as tired even when you are not. It reads as unfocused even when you are the sharpest person at the table. And it is one of the few things about aging that responds to a procedure measured in minutes.
Thirty minutes. That is half the length of a barre class.
Upper blepharoplasty addresses the excess or loose skin on the upper lid and the tissue underneath it. Dr. Mahsa Sohrab is a board-certified oculofacial plastic surgeon in Greenwich — a specialty that trains through ophthalmology rather than general surgery, meaning every year of her residency was spent inside the eye before her fellowship even started. That distinction matters here: patients at her practice can expect the surgery itself to take about 30 minutes, with local numbing typically used for upper lid work, decided in advance between the patient and Dr. Sohrab.
Thirty minutes. That is half the length of a barre class.
The change is not a new face. It is your face, awake. Skin tightens, the lid sits where it used to sit, and the eye opens back up.
The upper lid is what you notice first in the mirror. The lower lid is what shows up in other people's photographs of you. Puffiness, shadowing, the hollow that catches light badly in every restaurant.
Upper and lower eyelid surgery are separate procedures, and many patients choose one. Others combine them. Dr. Sohrab's practice also sees upper eyelid surgery paired with a brow lift or with nonsurgical treatments, built into a single treatment plan. Combining extends the time in the operating room, and it consolidates recovery into one window instead of two.
That flexibility is the part most people do not realize going in. Eyelid surgery is not a one-size decision. It is a menu, and the plan gets built around what your face is actually doing.
Male blepharoplasty is its own category at the practice, and it is not a marketing distinction. The mechanics of the surgery are close to identical. The difference lives in the adjustments the surgeon makes, because the eyelid area carries subtle markers of a masculine appearance, and the goal is to preserve those while still lifting the heaviness.
Done poorly, male eyelid surgery feminizes a face. Done well, nobody can tell you had anything done. They just stop asking if you slept.
Male patients are matched with local anesthesia or sedation depending on their needs and health, and surgery generally runs about two hours, adjusted for whatever else is in the plan. Beyond the aesthetics, patients whose upper lids have dropped far enough often see improvement in their field of vision.
Plastic surgeons reach the eyelid from different directions. Most train through general surgery and are certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, qualified across the entire body. Facial plastic surgeons arrive by way of ear, nose and throat. Oculofacial plastic surgeons like Dr. Sohrab come up through ophthalmology instead — the smallest of the three routes, and hers.
Dr. Sohrab earned her undergraduate degree at Barnard College of Columbia University, her Doctor of Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and completed her ophthalmology residency at Northwestern University. She then completed a two-year ASOPRS fellowship at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins, one of only 27 accredited positions in the country.