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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how 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 appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear 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 think I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically 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 term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|