Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term 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 desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
