Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds 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 major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
