Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts 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 surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
