Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking 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 terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
