‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments 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 dermis because we’re targeting deeper, 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 repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined 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.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|