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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up 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 cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, 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 indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag 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 top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting 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 least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|