Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “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 more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity 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 decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
