Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform 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 growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow 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 elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
