Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead 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 said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
