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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to 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 jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states 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 lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|