Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it began moving 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 needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|
