‘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 typical causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last 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 puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate 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 growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|