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 preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, 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 filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 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 cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
