‘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 upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed 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 wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant 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 lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients 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 effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|