‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe 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. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|