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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result 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 couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in 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 aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” 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 attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing 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 raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|