‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive 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 skin downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. 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 young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – 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 mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|