Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic 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 observe individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”
You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study 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 look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a conventional facelift entails elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose 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 injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of doctors avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” 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 replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|
