This morning, Molly-Mae Hague was trending on Google. Why? It wasn’t because she recently became engaged to the boxer boyfriend she met on Love Island in 2018, nor because her thoughts on post-maternity baby style have been making waves recently. No, the breakout search term was: ‘Molly-Mae before and after filler.’
Google the term and you’ll see no news about Molly-Mae’s cosmetic work or face filler, just a bunch of old articles about her decision to have her filler reversed in 2021. In February of that year, Molly decided to have all of her face and lip filler dissolved after a picture of her (taken from her YouTube vlogs about getting jaw filler) went viral and was the subject of intense trolling.
Later revealing that she no longer recognised herself when she saw the screenshot online, she told Steven Bartletton his podcast The Diary of a CEO that she was terrified looking at the way her face had changed without realising. ‘I wouldn’t say I got addicted to it, but by the age of 21, I didn’t look like the same person,’ she explained. ‘When I look back at pictures now, I’m terrified of myself. I’m like, “Who was that girl?” I don’t know what happened.’
After having all of her face and lip filler dissolved, as well as having her composite bonding removed on her teeth, Molly shared that she felt prettier than ever, and had ‘dropped about five years off [her] age.’
It’s been almost two and a half years since Molly-Mae had her filler dissolved, and the new mum has faced countless accusations of having more work done since. In fact, during her pregnancy she hit back at allegations she had started having lip filler again. ‘Guys do you really think while being pregnant I would get lip filler?’ she said in a YouTube video. ‘Like, what kind of a mother do you think I am?’
The accusations may never end, there’s rarely a day when a celebrity isn’t subject to side-by-side pictures being posted online with a never-ending list of assumptions about what work they’ve had done. But one must ask, why is everyone still so obsessed with looking at pictures of Molly-Mae before and after filler? For the search term to be trending near three years after her ‘transformation’, it seems as though her decision to once have filler – and then not – continues to define her existence.
There are so many more interesting things about Molly-Mae than her filler, whether she’d had it reversed or not that would be true, and despite all the recent excitement around her engagement, baby and even a new Netflix reality show At Home With The Fury’s, many people can’t seem to let go of fixating on her appearance.
If there’s one positive we can take from all of this, it’s that Molly-Mae’s before and after pictures at least offer an alternative for those that are considering having filler – particularly the young girls that make up her fanbase. While no one should be judged for choosing to have cosmetic treatments, in a world that encourages unreasonable standards of perfection, learning from Molly-Mae’s experience that you don’t have to alter your appearance to be beautiful (and you may just end up losing sight of your own beauty) is worth remembering too.