‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, 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 preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant 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 done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving 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 injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|