‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes related to a home packed of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion 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,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward 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 excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with 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 only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|