Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “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 believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed 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 required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
