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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to 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 most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies 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.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think 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 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|