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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty 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 surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – 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 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida 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, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|