Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “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 plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people 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 development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift 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 operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
