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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade 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 years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; 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 look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to 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 adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|