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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure 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 more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|