‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. 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 “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor 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 diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|