‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance 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 – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed 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 house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, 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 nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant 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 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 operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|