Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
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 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 youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘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 adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
