‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided 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 not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|