Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says 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 facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods 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 survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
