Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum 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 entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo 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 filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate 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 might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
