‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-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 new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional 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 needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

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

Once the preserve 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 weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|