Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin 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 secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit 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 anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers 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 youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep 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 Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. 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 doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her 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 jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
