‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent 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 advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|