Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains 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’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension 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 adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – 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 reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers 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 migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
