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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “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

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery 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 late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|