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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional 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 video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients 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 injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. 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 said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|