‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a house full of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address 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 head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, 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 facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|