‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts 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 based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, 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 causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor 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 allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|