‘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. Not for the typical reasons related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse 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 house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” 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 somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin 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 allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|