Tulisa Contostavlos is BACK. That's if you consider back to mean that she's done a very pacey cover of Shanks & Bigfoot's pop-garage banger *Sweet Like Chocolate *and is promoting it by going onto Good Morning Britain and talking to Susannah Reid and Piers Morgan. Not everyone gets to do that, but Tulisa does. Because she's back.
She's also sticking to her guns on old controversies that pretty wrongly led to her disappearing in the first place. On the sex tape of her that was released without her consent, viewed by thousands and eventually saw her settle with the perpetrator, Justin Edwards, out of court, she said: 'It's definitely a regret. I regret ever making it. Wouldn't you?
When asked why she did make it, or participate in it, she said: 'I wasn't actually that famous at the time but I had been in a relationship for two years and I trusted that person.'
And on the assault conviction that was overturned after she appealed - she said she did not hit Vas J Morgan, the blogger and TOWIE star who'd published the sex tape on his site - she put it simply: 'I appealed because it didn't happen.'
What did happen, though, in the time Tulisa now refers to as her 'Blackout' period?
'I had an allergic reaction to lip fillers. And I looked like Finding Nemo... It was like, "Eurgh, what have I done?"'
What we like here, is not just a woman regretting doing something to her body that many women feel pressured to do in order to look like the right sort of woman, is that she hasn't just compared her lips to Nemo, one singular fish. She's compared her lips to Finding Nemo, the entire CGI feature film. They were big, but not that big!
She added that while she won't use fillers again, she still uses something on them: 'Luckily, they were all temporary, so they dissolve, I did actually dissolve some [of the work I had done]. My lips, I still have to maintain because I like them.'
Tulisa is the second famous woman in as many weeks to explain that she regrets a plastic surgery decision. Friends star Courteney Cox recently said to Bear Grylls on his celebrity survival show Running With Bear Grylls: 'I think there’s a pressure to maintain [your looks], not just because of fame, but just, you know, being a woman in this business. Getting older has not been… I don’t think it’s the easiest thing. Sometimes you find yourself trying, and then you look at a picture of yourself and go, "Oh, God." Like, you look horrible.'
'I have done things that I regret, and luckily they’re things that dissolve and go away. So, um, that’s good, because it’s not always been my best look.'
Maybe, maybe, it's not only Tulisa and Courteney who have learned lessons about bad plastic surgery, but all of us. Paying for something that dissolves sounds bad enough as it is, without it being something that a) leads to ridicule and b) is in your face. It's understandable that as a woman in public life you're always damned if you do and damned if you don't, but maaaybe, we can all save ourselves the hassle of making up mean things to say about plastic surgeried women by just not pressuring them to be ultra perfect all the time!
Like this? You might also be interested in:
#TulisaFace Brought Out The Worst In Us. Why Are Smart Women So Snide About Plastic Surgery?
Tulisa In Court For Allegedly Assaulting The Man Who Helped Release Her Sex Tape
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.