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

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting 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 somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when 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 required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – 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 booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|