‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas 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 needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|