Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as 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 face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her 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 jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
