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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how 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 Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, 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 methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in 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 cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. 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’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|