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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” 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 ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, 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 had to keep replenishing it – 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 required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|