Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up 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 explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” 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 bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; 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 advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from 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 doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
