Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – 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 “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
