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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy 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 attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands 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, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least 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 entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|