Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, 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 puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for 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. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating 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 overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin 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 underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off 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.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract 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 surgery, including a three-day|
