The Curse of the Perfect Pout: A Story of Needles, Nature, and Nonsense
Imagine, for a moment, a world where thin lips are a curse. A world where the poor souls born with them can barely eat, whistle, or even close their mouths. It is a world of pity, whispered behind cupped hands, until we gaze upon our own "full, luscious, pout-worthy" lips. Of course, this is a jest. A cruel, ridiculous joke. Because those lips—the ones we are taught to envy—are not nature's gift. They are not even human. They are artificially inflated, overhydrated, swollen monuments to a beauty standard so bizarre that it might as well be a galactic trade regulation.
If you were one of the over 2.1 million people who had lip fillers in the US alone last year, this story is for you. The incentive to make women feel ugly and insecure in their natural lips is not an accident; it is a business. A massive, multi-billion-dollar business. There is a fortune to be made in convincing women they are worthless without expensive tweakments. Even financial analysts acknowledge the truth: the current beauty standards for females are literally impossible to attain. And they also acknowledge the deliciously cynical reason why. The worldwide valuation for the lip filler market in the US alone reached $1.3 billion last year. Create the problem. Sell the solution. So, where in the world have we gone so wrong, and why do so many women feel they need bigger lips?
The Usual Suspects and the Shot Glass of Despair
Let us begin with the most tragic player in this dark charade: Kylie Jenner. She may be the biggest victim of this entire lip filler con. Unlike her half-sisters Kim and Kourtney, whose Armenian heritage blessed them with naturally full lips, Kylie's ancestry is predominantly English, Irish, Dutch, German, and Welsh—a decidedly white, small-lipped map. She was never meant to have big lips. Yet, growing up in Los Angeles, where everyone and their dog is tweaked within an inch of their life, she felt the pressure. At the tender age of 17, she began having dermal fillers injected into her lips. First, she claimed it was just lip liner. She said she was sick of everyone assuming she’d had work done. She even had her sister Kim back up the claim, explaining how Kylie was just "so good at makeup" with her liner. But we all knew. The Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge was born from that lie. I wish I could forget the pictures of exploded lips that haunt me. Imagine having to go to the hospital and explaining that you sucked your lips into a shot glass so hard they literally burst—all because you wanted to look like Kylie Jenner.
We live, and sometimes we learn. Despite having access to the world's best cosmetic injectors, Kylie has ended up looking like Daffy Duck. Her lips have been blown so far past their natural capacity that what should be inside her mouth is now visible on the outside. And they just keep getting bigger. And bigger.
Weird and Wonderful (and Terrifying) Procedures
With the increased demand for larger lips comes a carnival of bizarre procedures. Have you heard of the Russian lip technique? It aims to give women a defined, flat, doll-like shape while avoiding an "overdone" look. Perhaps I need stronger glasses, because it looks utterly overdone and distorted to me. Can you imagine getting that many injections into your sensitive lip tissue? Then there is the butterfly technique. This one looks like something out of a horror film. It involves tape, dermal filler, and injecting neurotoxins to achieve a more prominent Cupid's bow. Experts say it is actually bloody dangerous. And using UK reality stars like Lauren Goodger and Katie Price as models is not a great start, considering both were natural beauties before they did this to themselves. When will we learn that tweakments do not necessarily make you look better?
The Unspoken Risks: Reactions, Necrosis, and Bollocks
By the way, has anyone ever told you that you can get lip fillers and then, randomly, have a reaction to them one day? Instead of your lips looking like plump, perfect pillows, they look like a swollen, angry mess. Look at Basia querry. She had a random reaction to her fillers, despite having them twice before. She is done. Then there is the poor girl who won free lip fillers. She had had them multiple times before, but on this occasion, her lips said, "Oh heck no." She was terrified, her lips swelling instantly. But these reactions are nothing compared to what happens if your injector hits an artery. Then you are in for a world of pain. You will not be told this when you rock up for your injection. Just because these procedures have become so normalized that literal children are getting them done does not mean they are not incredibly risky.
Look at Rachel Napia. She went to a Botox party—already off to a bad start—and decided to get some lip filler. Her top lip touched her nose. She felt a burning, throbbing, pulsating pain, as if her lips were seconds away from bursting. The filler had been injected into an artery, causing a mass blockage. Left untreated, that leads to necrosis—the death of soft tissue. Irreversible damage. Then consider poor Isabella Skil. She had lip fillers, then went on holiday to Spain two weeks later. This is how her lips reacted to sunlight. Honestly, what on earth was injected into her?
The Accidental Anti-Influencers
An influencer's job is to influence you to do things. But sometimes, it has the opposite effect. Molly May started getting lip fillers at 16 and went so overboard that she went from looking like a regular pretty girl to a swollen caricature. When you have naturally petite features, big lips just do not work. She finally admitted it, saying she could really see how unnatural they looked, felt hard and lumpy, and needed to be dissolved. Fay Winter, another UK reality star, went so overboard that her lips took over her entire face. They were no longer lips; they were sausages. Look at Helen Flanigan. This is Helen natural: absolutely beautiful. This is Helen post-filler. Now look at Chloe Ferry. She went from a regular pretty girl to someone who lost her original face. And she even got her mom on the filler train. Just say no, kids. The mother-daughter duo of Briel Beamman and Kim Zaks are the poster girls for why you should just say no. Brielle before, Brielle after. Kim before, Kim after. Repeat after me: bigger is not always better. What looks good on someone else does not mean it will look good on you.
The Horrifying Truth About Dissolving
Thankfully, some of these influencers have seen the light and had their fillers dissolved. But the demand for the dissolving procedure has also skyrocketed. You would think that is a good thing, right? Oh, wrong again. We are told lip fillers dissolve naturally, that they are temporary, and that if you don't like them, you can simply have another injection to dissolve them immediately. It is not that simple. The drug injected to dissolve the filler is hyaluronidase, and it is pretty harsh. It may dissolve your filler, but it can also destroy your healthy tissue, leaving you with permanently deformed lips. And let us skim over the fact that it is made from bull testicles. Yes, gross.
Furthermore, if you regularly get filler, your lips get increasingly bigger. Your lip skin stretches to accommodate the new girth. What happens if you spread your appointments too far apart, or decide you want your natural lips back, or—God forbid—the beauty standard changes and sausage lips are out? Your lips will be so stretched that they will never return to what they looked like naturally. Worse, repeated injections can leave your lips saggy and loose, requiring a surgery called lip reduction, where a surgeon literally cuts away the excess stretched skin.
The Intelligent Design of Your Face
If you have small lips and feel insecure, I do not blame you. We have been sold the lie that small lips are unattractive. But beauty standards are not stagnant. They are constantly changing. What was hot 30 years ago is not hot now, and what is hot now will not be hot in 30 years. Artificially inflated big lips have only recently been considered attractive. For hundreds of years, for certain cultures, small lips were the beauty standard. They were considered feminine and petite. People would have been horrified if their lips looked like this. And for good reason: lips like this do not exist in nature.
Our bodies—and our lips, because they are part of our body—adapt to the conditions of our environment. People with genetics originating from warm, hot climates typically have larger lips. This is not an accident. Your body does not care if you are beautiful. Large lips have a larger surface area, which helps evaporate moisture and cool the body. More heat can be dispersed, making the person more comfortable in the heat. It is the same reason that people from hotter climates tend to have larger nostrils and smaller, flatter nose bridges. It helps them breathe in warm, humid air. On the other hand, people from colder climates—northern Europe, Norway, Finland, England—evolved to have smaller nostrils and higher nose bridges. In a cold country, the air is dry. If you inhale that air directly into the lungs, it hurts. Smaller nostrils and higher bridges warm and humidify the air before it hits your sensitive lungs. The same goes for your lips. People from colder climates typically have smaller lips. Why? Because if you had large lips in a very cold country, they would get windburned, dry, and chapped. Small lips mean less surface area exposed to the elements and less heat evaporation.
So, if you have ever wondered why you look the way you do—why you have small lips or large lips, big nostrils or small nostrils—look at your ancestry. You can even do a genetic test at home. I am a history nerd; I love learning about my genetics. I purchased an Ancestry.com gene test and found out I am mostly Scottish, English, Irish, and Nigerian, which was interesting considering most of my family comes from Germany. If you wonder why you look the way you do, get yourself a gene test. Learn about your personal history. It might change the way you think about yourself. Did you know it took 8,190 people just to create you? Do not let social media and the beauty standard make you think you need to change yourself. You don't.
The Migrating Filler
And now, the final, strangest truth. New evidence suggests that dermal fillers never actually break down in the body like we originally thought. Instead, they migrate to other parts of the body. How bloody gross is that? It would explain why girls who regularly get lip filler end up looking like Daffy Duck, with that strangely inflated filtrum and sticky-outy lips.
So, share this story. Share it with anyone you know who has been getting lip filler, anyone who feels insecure about their small lips. Because the answer is not in a needle. The answer was always inside you, written in your own unique history. And it is beautiful.