Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion 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 how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. 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 eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt 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 surgery, including a three-day|
