Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”
You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to looseness in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients 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 thirty years old. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”
Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact 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 preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
