Why Your Ears And Nose Look Bigger When You’re Older

You may have noticed it happening to your parents or grandparents — that slow spreading out of their nose as they get older. And then one day you look in the mirror and … have your earlobes always looked like that? Or maybe you snap a selfie with your friend and look back on it later, wondering if your nose has always been so … pronounced.

While we’re always our own worst critics, it’s true that your nose and ears can seem to grow or spread out over time. So, what gives?

For starters, your nose and ears are not actually growing, according to Dr. Jacob Rinkinen, a board-certified plastic surgeon at Baptist Health Jacksonville. The appearance of our nose changes because, as we age, our collagen production decreases.

“Over time, gravity takes its course, and also the collagen production goes down, which causes the elasticity of the skin to go down,” he said. “The tip of the nose droops more, making the illusion that it’s getting longer, and you can start to see more bony prominences because you’re starting to lose some of that soft tissue or fat around your bone and cartilage.”

So, yes, your nose can get a little bit longer when the tip sags, and your dorsal hump (a bony bump some people have on the bridge of their nose) can become more pronounced.

“With your nose, you have a bony structure, a cartilage structure, a muscle structure and a skin structure. As you age, your bone starts to resorb, so you lose some of that bony structure, and things start to move in the direction of gravity as a result,” said Dr. Muneeb Shah, a dermatologist at Hudson Dermatology and Laser Surgery in New York City who’s also known as the popular TikTok user “DermDoctor.” “So your nose can start to hang a little bit lower because you’ve lost a lot of those structural elements.”

When it comes to the ears, there’s really only one part of them that changes with time: the earlobes. Gravity takes its toll on the lobes over the years, and the soft tissue inside them loses its tone and elasticity as we age, said Dr. Jeffrey Marcus, chief of the Division of Plastic, Maxillofacial and Oral Surgery at the Duke University School of Medicine. This is especially true for people who have worn heavy earrings throughout their lives.

While longer lobes may give you the impression your ears have grown, Marcus explained that it’s just a trick of the eye.

“Ears are about 90% of their adult size by the time the kids are age 8 or 9, which is why many kids look like they have big ears, because their ears grow faster than the rest of them,” he said. “And so if you measure a 10-year-old’s ear and you measure their parents’ ears from top to bottom, they’re often the same size. Ears don’t grow the rest of [one’s] life. They just don’t.”

It’s good news that our ears don’t actually grow as we age, and by avoiding weighty baubles in your earlobes, you can, ostensibly, keep them from stretching out so much. But other than that, there’s not much else you can do to fight gravity. Now, can you stop your nose from drooping?

Minimizing your sun exposure will help maintain its elasticity and collagen production, Rinkinen said. Also, if you’re dealing with wrinkles around your nose that are bothering you, moreso than your nose itself, he recommended asking your provider about laser treatments or chemical peels before doing anything invasive.

However, Marcus said the only real way to prevent your nose from drooping is, essentially, a preventive rhinoplasty.

“If somebody has a rhinoplasty in their 20s, it’s probably going to stay put pretty well,” he said. “If it was done well with good support, then it probably would not drop.”

There’s no reason you have to “correct” the appearance of your nose unless it is somehow restricting your breathing, Rinkinen said. But if it makes you self-conscious, you’re definitely not alone. Marcus shared that he sees many patients wanting to do something about their nose when it has started to change.

“Most people who are looking for cosmetic rhinoplasty after their mid-40s — almost all of them are at least partially influenced by the drooping appearance of the tip and the fact that it looks longer,” he said. “It’s one of the most common things that we treat.”

That said, his best advice to everyone about dealing with these inevitable parts of aging is much simpler than rushing into a plastic surgeon’s office.

“Stop taking selfies. They’re horrible,” Marcus said. “The biggest boon for rhinoplasty surgeons at the time of COVID to now was the increased amount of time people spent looking at themselves on screens, which tend to magnify the appearance of the nose. They make it look bigger than it is.”

And just remember that no one is looking as closely at your features as you are.

“With ears, it’s like the one body part whose main function is to not be noticed,” Marcus said. “There’s nobody who walks around and says, ‘Hey, you have really nice ears.’”