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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – 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 never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|