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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse 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 explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting 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 surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon 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 entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep 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 finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|