‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says 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 opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least 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 undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown 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 ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|