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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband 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 online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – 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 medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed 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 patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her 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 day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|