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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first 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 home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, 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 repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|