Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
Her appearance 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, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen 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 look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate 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 growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
