Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
