Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video 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 Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
