Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will debut her new face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”
Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A rhytidectomy, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.
Personal Journey
Preisinger had never planned 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 twenties, 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 using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the risks they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|
