‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to 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 everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates 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 in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” 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. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have 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 point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – 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 brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘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.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|