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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, 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 Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls 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 follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|