Another day, another famous woman having her appearance dissected by strangers on the internet. The woman in question, Tulisa Contostavlos, has had a particularly rough time of it too. Tulisa first found fame as part of the mid noughties London hip hop trio, N-Dubz, when she was in her late teens. In 2011, at the age of 23, she became a household name when she joined the panel of judges on The X Factor. The following year, she was the victim of revenge porn when her ex-boyfriend Justin Edwards released a sex tape that ultimately derailed the trajectory of her career.
Now she is one of ten celebrities living in the infamous I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here jungle. Already dubbed a ‘fan favourite’, most people were delighted to see the self-titled ‘female boss’ back on their screens. Others, regrettably, have taken to trolling her appearance. And according to Google Trends, ‘Tulisa face lift’, ‘Tulisa botox’, and even ‘what has Tulisa done to her face?’ are all trending right now.
Aside from a few appearances on Loose Women, and N Dubz’ reunion in 2022, Tulisa largely kept out of the limelight in the years that followed. Seeing this reaction, it's not exactly difficult to understand why.
She's had a difficult time with fame. Speaking on Olivia Attwood’s podcast in October, Tulisa said it felt like ‘virtual rape’ when her sex tape was leaked in 2012. The singer went on to say she felt ‘judged, disgusting and ashamed’ during that period. Not only that, butrevenge porn was not yet illegal so Tulisa only received 'an apology' from her ex.
‘It’s taken me years. I didn’t even know how long I would need to process it,’ she told the podcast host. ‘It’s affected my relationships to this day and intimacy and all those kinds of things – it’s life changing in a big, big way.’
Tulisa's tabloid sting
In 2013, Tulisa was also the victim of a ‘tabloid sting’, whereby she was targeted by Mazher Mahmood, an undercover journalist, posing as an influential film producer who wanted her to star in a Hollywood blockbuster. Mahmood met the singer at a hotel in London where she allegedly arranged for him to be sold half an ounce of cocaine by one of her contacts.
She was later arrested and charged with being concerned in the supply of a class A drug after Mahmood handed evidence to the police. However, the trial was eventually thrown out after Mahmood’s driver changed his statement to remove comments the singer had made about her disapproval of hard drugs. Mahood was later found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. As for Tulisa, she has spoken candidly about feeling suicidal in the wake of the whole ordeal and the damage the case did to her reputation. She told Sky News, ‘I didn’t have any fight left in me. I don’t know who that person was but she was in a very dark place.’
Three years later, Tulisa fronted the BBC Three documentary Tulisa: The Price of Fame, where she charted her experience of being treated as tabloid fodder and the long-term consequences of fame.
Does Tulisa have Bell's palsy?
In her conversation with Olivia Attwood in October, she also spoke about her Bell’s palsy diagnosis in 2020 – a condition she has had for 12 years. According to the NHS, Bell’s palsy is a temporary weakness or lack of movement that usually affects one side of the face. ‘When I was about 24, I had my first Bell’s palsy attack, so went down to a certain extent, left with some mild swelling and then my whole face just dropped.’ She later added, ‘My face remained like that for seven months. I didn’t go out, I just hid.’
Her first attack happened after a serious horse-riding accident where she fractured her skull and suffered a lot of nerve damage.
Tulisa admitted that she found herself using filler to 'balance out' the effect of the condition on her face and it became a 'vicious cycle'.
The singer said that things were particularly bad in 2022 around the time she reformed with N-Dubz. A doctor performed an ultrasound on her face and found 'three chronically infected cysts' in her cheek, one of which burst during an 'explorative operation'.
'I would have like tingling sensations like little ants crawling in my face. I started seeing doctors all around the UK – "Something's wrong with me, what's wrong with my face" – it was so scary. This went all the way up until this year it was horrific.
'I constantly felt like my cheek was on fire,' she said. 'I'd have good days and bad days and on some days, I'd take steroids, which would bring it down. When I was doing that N-Dubz run it was at its worst, so you might see an interview, I look normal. And then you see another interview, it's like, what the hell is going on with my face?'
In hindsight, Tulisa thinks myriad other health problems may have been caused by the cyst and triggered her Bell's palsy. 'I've had all these health problems for years – sarcoidosis, immune disorders and this explains all the symptoms that I was getting and could have been causing Bell's palsy because in total there was, I think, six of them. [The cysts] could have been growing over the years, actually triggering the Bell's.'
Tulisa previously told the Loose Women panel that she has learnt to deal with the condition, but people still judge the way she looks without knowing the cause. 'At any time, I have emergency steroids on me, and now luckily I know how to manage it, so the attacks don't last as long. There have actually been times when people have criticised me for the way I look and my face, not knowing I'm actually going through a Bell's palsy attack.'
This is the person who has, against all odds, found the strength to go on one of the biggest entertainment shows in the UK – the launch alone netted 7.7 million viewers. It’s likely that Tulisa is hoping her stint on the show will help her reclaim her narrative and allow her to speak about some of her experiences on her own terms.
How terrible, then, to see people immediately mock her appearance – especially those who are doing so in relation to Bell’s palsy. Luckily everyone’s favourite ally Rylan Clark was quick to jump to her defence after the opening episode of I’m A Celeb. He posted on X to say, ‘Also before people start going for appearance, Tulisa has been through a lot health wise the last few years so let’s not make shit jokes about her on twitter yeah x’. Well said, Rylan.
As someone in the public eye, Tulisa is not the first or last person to undergo cosmetic ‘tweakments’ to meet the ever-moving benchmark of beauty either. Nor has she ever denied having anything done. In fact, before heading into the jungle, the singer posted about having filler in her lips, lip liner tattooed, and her eyebrows permanently filled in. Any changes people may have observed about her appearance are not a secret – nor are they an excuse to mock her online.
With a shopping list of cosmetic procedures creeping its way into the mainstream anyway, it's hard for anyone to escape the pressure to look as 'perfect' as possible – even if that means different things to different people. Let alone someone like Tulisa, who has spent the best part of her life being judged by the public.
All too often we watch women at the height of fame get torn to shreds by the tabloids and trolls on social media. Fortunately, although not commonly, we witness them rebuild themselves and carve out a new path on their own terms. If this is Tulisa’s opportunity to defy the years of torment, ridicule and injustice she has been subjected to – please let’s not focus on her appearance.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across pop culture, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things TV for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow shows with equal respect).