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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – 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 half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, 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 among a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, 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 Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on 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 unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum 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 twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself 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 blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|