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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, 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 puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls 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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” 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 ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|