Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
