Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose 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 ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
