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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal 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 hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, 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 secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined 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 currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons 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 different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|