‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw 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 look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

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 decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, 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 specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort 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 youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between 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 eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|