‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her 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 neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|