Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the typical causes associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Human faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are attracting a different type of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes 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.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown 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 ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.
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 Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a list of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
