Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south 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, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag 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 top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum 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 twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
