‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You risk operating on individuals 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 excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable 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 completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown 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 reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|