Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
