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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic 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 opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive 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’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|