‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe 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. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, 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 recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|