Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, 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 is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas 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 needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor 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 eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
