Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic 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.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective 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’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look 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 plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, 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 produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
