‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is 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 conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon 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 recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, 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 experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|