‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, 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,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|