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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen 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, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor 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 online call from her home. “I had to tell 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 individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “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 facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. 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 doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|