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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting 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 evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional facelift entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that to some extent, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she had to keep 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 suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|