Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
