Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called 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,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, 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’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
