Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
