‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-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 couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London 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 observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on people 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 injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|