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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates 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 appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive 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 is what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for 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 trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, 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.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution 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 arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|