‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual 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 everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective 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 pulls the skin down with it.”

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

Once the preserve 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 advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, 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 facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift 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 mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|