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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum 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 wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as 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 facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her 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 jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|