There’s a whole stigma right now about body positivity, pushing girls to be happy with what their mama’s gave them.
Some believe to accept themselves as who they are, they have to meet some type of criteria: big butt, big boobs, nice lips, hour glass shape, perfectly styled and colored hair, etc.
Some even go as far as surgery to “replace” their “flaws” with a look more acceptable to society.
Lip injections, or lip augmentation, is done in a doctor’s office and takes almost no time at all. It’s a new fad popping up lately.
The most recent and most popular type of lip augmentation is hyaluronic acid fillers, according to WebMD.
These fillers are also the safest and least painful type of lip augmentation because hyaluronic is found naturally in the body, which helps increase volume in your lips.
The fillers last six months, longer than other methods. Other methods include collagen fillers, fat fillers and implants. All of these methods are used to volumize, add shape and structure to lips.
Now here’s the cringe-worthy part of the procedure: according to WebMD, a topical numbing agent is used either at the injection sites or are used to numb your lips altogether.
Next, a thin needle is injected into multiple parts of your lips to put the filler in and the effects take place immediately. After the procedure, side effects include swelling, bruising, bleeding from the injection sites and tenderness for up to 10 days.
Some long-term side effects include prolonged swelling, lip asymmetry, tissue loss from injection into a blood vessel, scarring and itching around the lips and much more.
The most commonly known celebrity with noticeable lip injections is Kylie Jenner.
Many girls look up to her for her “beauty,” all of which is plastic surgery.
Twitter has a wide variety of opinions of Kylie Jenner and her lip injections, one user @hellucinate said: “I want lip injections im trynna b like kylie jenner (sic)”
If you look up before and after pictures of Jenner, the results are astonishing and almost scary.
“Kylie jenner has had so many lip filler injections and so much botox she can’t smile properly at just 19… she screwed her face up” Tweets @katysxox, followed by three awkward photos of Kylie Jenner trying to smile.
Lip injections only last up to six months, which means you have to keep going back and spending bucko bucks just to alter your lips.
We all know the saying “beauty is pain,” but is it worth the money, bruising, bleeding, swelling, and whatever else could possibly go wrong from lip injections?
Body positivity shouldn’t be about altering your body to something that it’s not, to be happy with yourself.
It’s about accepting what it is you’re naturally born with and flaunting your inner beauty, because your inner beauty can completely alter how you appear on the outside.
Learning to be confident in who we are as people is probably one of the hardest things a young adult has to accept in life.
The only person you need to satisfy is yourself, no one else.
It’s okay to be lost along the way, for life itself is a learning experience. So before you go online and look up some type of way to further “beautify” yourself, walk to the nearest mirror and find at least one thing you love about yourself and do this every day until you’re able to accept and love yourself the way you are.
Beyonce said it best “perfection is the disease of a nation, its the soul that needs the surgery”, so know you’re perfect the way you are.