‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

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 twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|