‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw 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 video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started 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 suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|