Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started 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 local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
