Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, 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 upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|
