‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward 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 excessive use of dermal fillers 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 development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed 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 right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|