Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse 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 tells 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 attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” 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 gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her 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 neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
