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

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says 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 bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do 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 in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|