In search of the “perfect” wedding pout, Tish Weinstock faced every bride’s beauty nightmare: had she gone too far?
I’m standing in a queue at a pharmacy, a week before my wedding day, waiting to buy some medical-grade antihistamine. The woman in front of me is moving at a glacial pace, while I’m having the mother of all meltdowns and making a deal with a God I haven’t spoken to in years. The problem: my lips have blown up to the size of a Jeff Koons sculpture. This is not where I wanted to be aesthetically so close to the finish line. Help.
As a beauty editor who has written more wedding preparation guides than you can shake a needle at, I know full well that anything invasive (that includes minimal procedures such as Botox and filler) you may want to do in the lead up to the big day has to be done at least four weeks in advance. Things can, and do, go wrong. You also need to account for swelling, bruising and redness. So how the hell did I end up here?
It was all going so well. I was on a plan: regular facials, a bit of Botox, a touch of microneedling… all in moderation, obviously – I’m a professional, after all. But then, one morning while looking in the mirror, something shifted and I decided that I needed to get a drop of filler in my lips, despite leaving it wildly too late. So against my better judgement, and that of the regular practitioner I see, who refused to inject me, I went in search of someone who could supersize my pout. Twenty-four hours later, I was living in a nightmare.
When I told the doctor on Harley Street that I didn’t want my husband to recognise me when it came to peeling back my veil, I was clearly making a joke. But standing in the queue the next day, those words came back to haunt me. Desperately, I began to question why I’d been getting all these tweakments done in the first place. To look prettier? Because that’s what other people do? I had just wanted to look like myself on my wedding day – myself, but, you know, better – but at what point does bettering oneself actually end up negating the self altogether? In a world obsessed with perfection, are we starting to lose sight of ourselves?
“Perception drift” is a term used to describe the shift in your self-perception as you undergo new procedures and start to lose control over your image. “The more procedures you get, the more difficult it can be to remember what you looked like in the very beginning,” explains Dr Olivia Remes, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, life coach and author of This Is How You Grow After Trauma. “Also, with each perceived ‘flaw’ that you’re fixing, you may realise that something else needs fixing, trapping you in a vicious cycle that can be hard to get out of.” This is something Dr Maryam Zamani, oculoplastic surgeon, facial aesthetics doctor and founder of MZ Skin, has noticed in a growing number of her patients, so much so that she’s had to start turning some away. “My practice is built on the ethos that less is more. However, there are always patients who want more, but I will not treat someone if I do not think they want realistic outcomes.”
Tish Weinstock Wore 3 Extraordinary Vintage Gowns For Her “High Drama” Halloween Wedding At Belvoir CastleGallery42 PhotosView Gallery
The problem here isn’t just with fillers, but with the edited way we present ourselves online. When it comes to having my photograph taken, I know my angle (three-quarters), I know my light (direct) and I know my pose (pert pout and lobotomised stare). I’m so used to seeing a very specific image of myself that when someone catches me off-guard I find it increasingly jarring. It’s the same when you see yourself reflected back on Zoom, when those niggling background voices start to gnaw away at you. “Do I really look like that?” And, more disturbingly, “What can I do to fix it?”
But it’s not just looking at ourselves that’s the problem, it’s looking at other people. On a recent trip to Paris, I was shocked by the plethora of plumped-up faces I saw framing the front row at the spring/summer 2024 couture shows – not only by the amount of filler on display, but at the disparity between how these well-known celebrities appear online versus how they actually look in real life. What hope can any of us have concerning our own self-image if our perception of those we all look up to starts to shift too?
This is an increasing concern for GP and cosmetic doctor Dr Ahmed El Muntasar, who has witnessed an uptick in patients with increasingly unrealistic expectations. “Before, people would come into the clinic with a photograph of a celebrity saying they want to look like them, whereas now they come in with a photograph of a celebrity that’s been heavily edited or even a photograph of themself with a filter, neither of which, of course, is based on reality.”
Beyond putting a dent in our pockets and getting ourselves locked out of our phones when facial recognition technology fails to identify us, the real toll our quest for perfection is taking is on our mental health. “Perfection is like a mirage,” says Dr Remes. “You chase after it and, once you get there, you’re often still unsatisfied.” Cue depression, anxiety and raging imposter syndrome, the very feelings that might have led you down this slippery slope in the first place.
So what, then, is the solution? Thankfully, we’re already starting to see a shift in the other direction, with more and more practitioners being asked to dissolve filler, as patients attempt to return to their former selves. You hear about celebrities doing this all the time. (Whether they actually do it, however, is another story, but it certainly gives us something to think about.)
Despite what you might think, this isn’t some call to arms to go get your face deflated or, indeed, to not get any little tweaks here and there at all. It’s more of a reminder to proceed with caution. If you’re starting to get funny looks at passport control or your husband-to-be doesn’t recognise you, let this be your sign that you might need to walk it back a bit. Above all, the practitioner you see is paramount. See the right person, listen when they say that it’s too much, question them if they say it’s not enough and don’t lose sight of who you are. Luckily, by the time my wedding day came around, my lips had settled down and my face had returned to that from whence it came. But consider this a very important lesson learnt.