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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon 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 open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic 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 see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. 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 pulls the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|