‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although 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 ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo 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 filler, 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. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|