Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last 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 puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – 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 entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
