Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of 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 dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
