Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous 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 inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous 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 home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags 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, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals 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 operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term 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 youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
