Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
