Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique 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 loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms 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 undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” 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 using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift 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 day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
