Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “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 facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit 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 anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
