Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, 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 down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
