Reality television and cosmetic procedures have been happily co-existing for the past decade. The Kardashians led where Love Island followed, and the past few seasons of the ITV dating series sparked huge surges in enquiries about what Grazia coined the ‘Love Island face’, achieved with Botox and cheek and lip fillers.
Last January, one doctor told us that girls were coming in with ‘folders full of pictures’ of Love Islanders, whose looks they wanted to copy and paste. Could that all be about to change, though? Arguably Love Island’s most successful and influential alumna, Molly-Mae Hague – who came second in the 2018 series with Tommy Fury (yes, they are still together!) and has almost 7m followers on social media platforms – has begun charting her journey to become more natural.
In October, the 21-year-old documented her decision to dissolve her ‘lumpy, bumpy’ lip filler, which she’d been having topped up for years. ‘This is something I’ve been putting off now for the last six months. I am getting my lips dissolved,’ she said. ‘My lip filler journey has been a very, very long one, I’ve been getting my lips filled since I was about 17, which is literally ridiculous. I want to talk you through the process of undoing [it].’ Molly recently revealed that getting the lip filler removed was the ‘best decision’ she’s ever made.
Next up on Molly’s journey was getting the composite bonds on her teeth (where resin is applied to change their shape or colour) taken off, telling followers, ‘Goodbye composite bonds, hello natural teethies’. She explained, ‘The main thing for me was to make sure my teeth and gums were in good condition because I got my composite bonds when I was 19. I don’t think that was a particularly smart move to be doing that so young when I didn’t need to.’
Dr Jane Leonard, GP and cosmetic doctor, says that while the Zoom Boom is very much a thing (the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons has said that its doctors were reporting up to a 70% increase in requests for virtual consultations since Covid-19 hit last year), she’s also receiving enquiries about adjusting and reversing tweakments. ‘Lockdown has actually brought three different types of enquiries into my inbox. There are the people who are looking at their faces during Zoom meetings and reaching out for treatments because they’re seeing areas they don’t like. Then there are the people who are chomping at the bit to get their usual treatments topped up. But I’m also getting enquiries from people who are seeing results that they don’t like any more. So, similar to Molly-Mae, they want to take action and reverse some of the work they’ve had done. Many people are looking at treatments they’ve had, wanting to get that all reversed and start afresh in a more natural way.’
Molly has been praised for showing her followers the realities of experimenting with cosmetic procedures. Dr Leonard says anyone having fillers – or having them removed – should be properly informed. She adds, ‘It’s really brave of Molly to talk about the treatments she’s had done. There’s so much body dysmorphia caused by social media because of filters and fillers – to talk about what pitfalls there can be in changing yourself can only be a good thing.’