‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery 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 overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

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

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street 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 whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|