Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures 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 techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
