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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax 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 follow

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never 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 historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving 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 cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|