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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think 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 shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|