Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor 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 unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online 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 Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option 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 arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
