‘My Eyes Were So Swollen 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 children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks 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 – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial 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: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states London-based 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 somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger 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 widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes 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 not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit 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 clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|