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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests 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 little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “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 more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off 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 upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift 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. “Then he stated, ‘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 adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|