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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger 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, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant 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 did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract 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 six-hour surgery, including a three-day|