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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. 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 skin down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch 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, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution 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 surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “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.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|