‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband 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 video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says 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 observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, 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,” explains prestigious London 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.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo 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 had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, 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 started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift 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 surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|