‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests 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.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built 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 superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage 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 obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|