Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“People 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 technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged 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 decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
