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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon 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 open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of 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 desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|