Selfies & Trout Pouts - What Are Our Girls Doing To Their Faces?

With beauty ‘tweakments’ on the rise, even among teens, writer Louise Court talks to experts about the pitfalls of this unregulated industry – and asks why young women are so obsessed with changing their looks

- Louise Court

Remember when cosmetic surgery was the hush-hush secret of older, wealthy women who had the time and money to try to recapture their youth? Hollywood stars and trophy wives went to discreet clinics where doctors lifted breasts and faces, sucked out middle-aged spread, and ironed out wrinkles.

Not any more. There is a new kid on the block. Our daughters. Even in their late teens, many women are lusting after bigger breasts, plumped-up lips, and liposuctioned waists. Inspired by celebs like the Kardashians, and combined with the pressures of looking ‘perfect’ on Instagram, this trend is creating a new norm. So much so you can now change your face at parties where lips are turned into pillow-sized pouts in-between sipping glasses of bubbly. Worryingly, many young people are going for the cheapest options – unqualified, cut-price practitioners who promote themselves on social media – without realizing there are serious risks attached. As horror stories and gruesome photos of botched injections make the headlines, there’s a demand for legislation so that only qualified medics are permitted to perform these procedures. Alice Hart-Davis, a beauty expert, mom, and author of The Tweakments Guide, is very concerned. “There’s a thing called ‘selfie dysmorphia’, where doctors state young people turn up and say ‘I don’t look like this anymore’, based on filtered pictures on their phones. Doctors have to say, ‘You never looked like that!’