Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen 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 property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face swollen 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 six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
