Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive 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 is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” 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 injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
