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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did 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 currently.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|