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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution 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 arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|