Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant 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 personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as 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 forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
