Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously 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 real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, 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 causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
