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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new 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 appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour 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|