Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective 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 is what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate 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 patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
