Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.
How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”
Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts
Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”
Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery
A facelift, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments 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 top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis down with it.”
You risk performing surgery on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue
Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the percentage of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.
“Patients are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.
Advanced Lifting Method
Where a conventional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.
Individual Experience
Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – 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 “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look young,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”
If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.
Choice and Surgery
For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas 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 needed to exit the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.
Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d arrived solo in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, plus a three-day|
