Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her new face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform all guests as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.
Her appearance is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, 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’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone jumped me.’”
Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts
According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facial lifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”
Understanding the Facelift Procedure
A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis down with it.”
You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow
Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
Deep Plane Technique
Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. 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 also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, 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 getting a facial lift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”
Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.
Decision and Procedure
For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor 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 found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.
Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|
