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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis 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, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of 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 do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – 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 jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|