You would call it the Great Plastic Surgery Reversal of 2023. If it gave the look of previously everyone in the general public eye was getting cosmetic procedures, now it looks like they’re having them undone. The Kardashians have allegedly removed their BBLs; Love Islanders have had fillers dissolved; Blac Chyna has documented a drastic make-under; Courteney Cox expressed regret about getting overly injection-happy previously and Kylie Jenner recently said she wished she had never touched her face. After almost a decade of lip filler dominating as a beauty trend, celebrities appear to be de-plumping in pursuit of a more “natural” look.

Experimenting together with your facial and body features is now easier, cheaper and more accessible than ever before, and the worldwide cosmetic surgery market is predicted to succeed in a staggering $71.93 billion by 2030. But just as the style world cycles through trends, so does the sweetness world, and lately the pendulum has been swinging back towards a more “natural” look.

“There have been industry surveys done that show that individuals in search of aesthetic treatments are anxious about being judged for having them,” suggests Dr Paul Charlson of Skinfluencer London, a non-surgical aesthetic clinic. “The now-entrenched trend that’s prevalent amongst younger patients – those of their twenties, as an example – for the overdone look reminiscent of greater lips, greater cheeks which have been led partly by reality TV stars and which you see throughout Instagram, has turn out to be almost a caricature look.” 

A part of the appeal of procedures like filler is that they’re often billed as temporary or easily reversible and due to this fact lower stakes than cosmetic surgery. As these “non-invasive” treatments turn out to be more normalised and accessible, they’re sometimes approached with the casualness of a beauty salon treatment reasonably than a medical procedure. Nevertheless, dissolving filler – in addition to correcting botched jobs – isn’t at all times so easy.

Probably the most common dermal filler dissolving technique is injections of hyaluronidase, an enzyme that breaks down hyaluronic acid (this could only be done in the event that they are hyaluronic acid fillers, versus silicone, Sculptra or Radiesse). For a lot of, this could work effectively. Lina, 32, from LA, selected to have the procedure after noticing her lip filler had migrated, creating what she calls a “shelf” above her lip. After having the dissolver administered with three sessions over six months – a process she admittedly describes as “painful, annoying and inconvenient” – it “ultimately worked, and we got back to square one”.

At the identical time, there are reports emerging of dissolving procedures not going to plan. One community on Facebook, ‘Botched Fillers & Hyaluronidase Damage Support Group’, has almost 6,000 members, while one other, ‘Botched Botox and Flawed Fillers’, has over 5,000. Many more exist. 32-year-old Taylor, from Chicago, is a member of the previous group, and is keen to share her negative experience of getting hyaluronidase injected.

She describes attempting to correct some lumpy lip filler, which she then had dissolved to refill. All the pieces went easily the primary time round, but after refilling, she noticed a nodule had formed on her lip. No problem, her injector said, they might just dissolve again and proper it. That point, she felt “immediate tingling throughout my cheek and chin”, and two days later she woke up with “extreme burning and really clear, visible dents in my chin where I had experienced the pain,” she tells Dazed. “It was a horror film, to get up every morning and feel extreme burning and never know what I’ll see within the mirror”.

Within the groups, members speak of feeling suicidal, of being unable to face life and having their confidence shattered. Many describe increased facial drooping, skin laxity and searing pain. Ella*, who’s from London, describes having an “unusual response” to her lip injections, in that they made her skin chap and peel. After deciding to get the filler dissolved, she found that “immediately they were wrinkled and smaller than they were before the filler”, which she’s confirmed by looking back at old photos – “so it’s not a case of me becoming ‘filler blind’”. “I even have noticed that my lip border has also turn out to be blurred and never as defined because it once was,” she adds. “I’m only 21, so seeing my lips so aged is horrible.”

“I feel very depressed,” she continues. “Knowing that I’ll never get my old lips back is heartbreaking, especially because while you get lip fillers done, you get reassured [by injectors] that when you don’t just like the final result you possibly can at all times get them dissolved and they’ll look similar to before. To be able to eliminate the lip wrinkles, I’m going to should get them redone, which implies I’m now depending on getting lip filler. One small decision that I made to get my lips filled has now ruined my life. I carry on looking back at my old pictures and wishing I just had my old lips back.”

An online search reveals wildly conflicting details about whether fillers can stretch the skin or not. Dr Fazeela Abbasi, a dermatologist at Euromed Clinic Dubai, tells Dazed that they’ll if the injections are of poor quality or are poorly-placed. Love Island star Faye Winter is one celebrity who, together with the likes of Molly-Mae Hague, Olivia Hawkins and Shaughna Phillips, has been open about getting dissolver in pursuit of a more natural aesthetic. Winter, whose hyper-plumped lip look attracted criticism on the dating show, told This Morning how, after undergoing the dissolving process, she was left with “very wrinkly lips” since they’d lost elasticity, and ended up putting 0.5ml back in them to smooth them out. Dr Abbasi adds that the longer someone has had filler, and the larger the amount injected, then the longer it’s more likely to take for lips to resume their previous appearance. “Generally, the longer the skin has been stretched, the more likely it is going to either should be tightened or, within the case of lips, refilled gently with a smaller volume.” 

It’s price noting that celebrities have more cash and influence at their disposal to tinker with various procedures. For atypical individuals who don’t have unlimited money, reversing procedures isn’t quite so straightforward, and a few have found there may be a good greater price. “I’m consciously not attempting to let it define my life, nevertheless it really did take over for a protracted while,” Taylor says. “It took away my self-esteem, made me feel ugly, made me feel like I might never feel beautiful again, like I couldn’t trust doctors. It’s just a extremely horrible experience.” 

“People act like, ‘Oh I’ll get filler, because you already know what, if I don’t prefer it, I’ll just get dissolver’ – no, dissolver must be a final resort” – Taylor

To make matters worse, Taylor says that when she approached the clinic about what happened, she was told she had “body dysmorphia” and was overreacting, despite photo evidence on the contrary, in addition to her own accounts of pain. “That just drove me crazy because that’s just such a typical strategy to diminish my experience,” she says.

Unsurprisingly, given the industry remains to be largely unregulated, there are differing accounts of hyaluronidase’s impact, and a few imagine way more research must be carried out in the world. A small investigation cited in The Guardian found that around 20 per cent of 150 people reported antagonistic changes after having the enzyme injected. “I don’t have concerns in regards to the safety of hyaluronidase, but reasonably about who and where it’s getting used,” says Dr Charlson. “In some instances, it’s getting used as a backstop for those offering filler treatments who wouldn’t have a medical background they usually are using it to correct or dissolve work. This will not be the way it must be used. Somewhat, it must be prescribed by a physician and administered in a medical facility.” He adds there may be a one in 100 probability of an allergic response to it, so says prior patch tests are vital.

Dr Abbasi adds that if it has been greater than three months and fillers have been injected in multiple areas across the face, she won’t dissolve them with hyaluronidase. “It is because the fillers have turn out to be intertwined with the collagen network in your skin so in essence, they’ve turn out to be a part of the skin,” she says. “This is especially worrying because they will probably be obstructing the lymphatic system, which can cause fluid retention, resulting in bloating. Also, when you attempt to dissolve the filler once the three-month mark has passed, you can even be dissolving the natural collagen, elastin, that are the skin’s intrinsic fibres which can dramatically weaken the skin.” In those cases, she prefers to make use of a “heat-based fractionated laser or RF Microneedling to diffuse the filler out and permit the lymphatic drainage of fluids to turn out to be more efficient”.

But for people like Ella, who’ve had firsthand experience of injections, there’s an urgent need for research on how natural hyaluronic acid regenerates, due to unclear information she’s had from professionals. “I even have contacted several clinics and a few say it is going to regenerate inside a number of days after dissolving, some say inside a number of months, some say that it’s inconceivable for dissolver to focus on your natural HA. There are such conflicting answers which, to me, makes it clear that nobody knows of course. That’s why people must be careful about happening the dermal filler journey.” Dr Naveen Somia, a Sydney surgeon, has called for greater regulation of dissolver, arguing that it is feasible that hyaluronidase targets naturally-occurring hyaluronic acid within the face in addition to the injected filler.

Taylor says she would warn people against “treat[ing] filler like a magic eraser. That’s what needs to alter now. People act like, ‘Oh I’ll get filler, because you already know what, if I don’t prefer it, I’ll just get dissolver’ – no, dissolver must be a final resort.” One other piece of recommendation, she adds, can be to “try not to simply chase an final result that’s just not going to occur and destroy yourself along the way in which. A variety of people assume that the bad outcomes aren’t going to occur to them, that it’s just an ‘other people’ thing. However the bad outcomes are only so way more common than people think.”

*Names have been modified

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