Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial 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 hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years prior to typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments 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 facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for 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 terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” 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 in this situation currently.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is early-stage, cautionary statements on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding 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 alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|
