Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended 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 jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
