Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, 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 growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage 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 appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
