‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|