‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people electing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor 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 Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved 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 surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting anonymously, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas 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 needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – 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 forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|