‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, 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: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant 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 Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|