‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of loud preteen kids, but because it’s the first time she will debut her new face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the last year in the UK; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” says Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she had to keep adding more – 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 facial and neck surgery might 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 Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facelift was the right solution for the laxity she was finding in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|