‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity 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 ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms 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 undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” 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 injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing 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 touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|