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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

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 Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|