‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Open Them’

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform 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 surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers 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 surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

If injectable substances completely disappear 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. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|