Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, 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 rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, 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 adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving 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. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
