Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
