Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, 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 spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant 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 personal preference.”
Explaining 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 built a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “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 allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, 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 regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing 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 lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
