‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding 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 Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom 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 fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|