Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
