‘I Couldn’t Even Open 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 associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin 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 moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning 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 targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look 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 where I’m at right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|