Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw 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: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Where a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing 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,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
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” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
A digital strategist with over a decade of experience in tech consulting and content creation, passionate about simplifying complex topics.
