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

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

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned 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 injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|