‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to 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

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking 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 aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients 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 thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift 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 mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|