Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat 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 ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity 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 driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue 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 suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
