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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says 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 industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called 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 connective 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 pulls the skin downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, 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 nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled 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 brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate 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 procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|