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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states 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 keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although 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 London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. 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 drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress 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 adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies 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 facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least 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 youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight 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 injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|