‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells 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 attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before 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 asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo 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 didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe 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 obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – 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 might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|