Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open 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 fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”
You risk operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.
“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, 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 dermis follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”
Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|
