Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – 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 half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed 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 wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” 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 express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
