Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
