Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online 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
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice 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 looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort 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 had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 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 found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
