‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “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 property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage 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 optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving 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 required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, 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 booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|