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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues 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 facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” 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.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in 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 rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue 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 facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead 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. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|