‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “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 known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort 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 says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|