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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our 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 known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use 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 major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers 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 wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – 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 face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|