‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen 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 initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; 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 now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started 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 local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|