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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum 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 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift 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 eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|