Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed 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 open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective 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 loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, 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 rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed 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 dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
