Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the typical causes related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the thirty-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 industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to 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 okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue called 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 becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating 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 no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
