Can we talk about your lips?

Plus the return of The Split, something to make your hair nice, a book, and why Hackney probably isn't the new Cotswolds...

I don’t necessarily mean your lips. Your lips may be perfectly fine. But last week, a friend sent me a photo of someone else with that emoji of the monkey covering its mouth, and a messaging saying ‘Oh no! What’s she done?!’ It was her lips, we decided, she’d had them done and now her mouth looked like one of those baboons with the red bottoms.

Women have been having their lips done - injected with filler - for some time now. Everyone on television has theirs done. Growing numbers of friends have too. I remember a particularly good Times Magazine cover a few Decembers ago featuring a very juicy young mouth and the headline something like ‘Please can I have a pair of new lips for Christmas?’ The story was about the rise and rise of teens having their lips injected so they could look ‘better’ on social media.

But big fat lips seems to have become so normalised now that we don’t even mention them. We simply see someone we haven’t for ages, who has…done something…and we nod and smile and say how great they look. Hmmm. Is this progress? How can we expect teenage girls not to be a *bit* confused about what their mouths should look like when so many grown-ups are plumping them like bed pillows?

No judgment on Botox or fillers in general. Some years ago, not long after I turned 30, I emailed the beauty editor of Tatler, where I worked them, and quietly asked what I should do if I was starting to worry about the lines on my forehead. She immediately booked me an appointment at a clinic in Chelsea and told me not to worry about a thing. Off I went to this clinic, to a stark and bright white room where a doctor took several photos of my face at alarming angles with a large iPad.

‘Can I ask what you’re worried about?’ she asked, frowning down at her iPad.

‘Er, just here,’ I said, waggling a finger at my forehead, and then the sides of my eyes ‘and maybe here.’

‘Ok, can I tell you what I’m worried about?’ she went on, before spinning round her iPad and pointing at my forehead, my hairline, my eyes, my cheekbones, either side of my nose and my chin. I subsequently lay down in that stark, white room and she got to work. Within minutes, I’d had Botox in three places AND fillers in my cheekbones (all for free, because the doctor was a friend of the magazine), and I walked out of the clinic panicking because I had a first date that night.

‘Help!’ I texted a colleague, ‘I look like I’ve been attacked by a hundred bees!’

‘Don’t be hysterical,’ she replied, ‘It’ll go down within 20 minutes.’

It did, and I loved it. Tighter, brighter skin; cheekbones so I felt (a tiny bit) more like a Kardashian in photos. Again, I was 30.

I had Botox on and off for the next few years, and only stopping recently a) because I’d had to start paying for it, and dropping hundreds of pounds every four months suddenly felt extremely extravagant b) I worried that if I didn’t stop now, I’d surely have to stop at some point in the future at which point would my face simply droop southwards like a melted candle? Now I’m into good moisturiser and better SPF.

So, no judgement at all on those who have it. Especially those who have it and are very open about it like Katherine Ryan and Marian Keyes (I cannot bear people who have it and insist otherwise). I’m jealous, actually, of those who tinker because properly done it does look amazing. They look amazing. I just decided it wasn’t for me, partly because quite often I was left afterwards with one eyebrow peculiarly high and looked like a Disney villain.

But lips. Really big, fat, over-filled lips. Have we now got to the place where they’re normal too? There’s a new book called Pixel Flesh out this week, part exposé by a beauty insider who used to work on an app that was literally designed to offer and sell women a celebrity face - you want the Zendaya? You want the Kylie? No problem, this app would direct you to the right plastic surgeon. Ellen Atlanta then had an epiphany that perhaps this wasn’t a wholly fulfilling app to be working on and has written this book, called Pixel Flesh (tagline: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women) about how we all want to look the same, with an almost cartoonish face.

I know we’re not supposed to mention anyone’s Botox or lips because it’s considered impolite, or you’re screamed at for judging someone else’s choice. It’s hard enough being a woman without other women judging! And so on and so on. I know, I get it. But these lips. These increasingly gigantic lips. Should we not talk about them either?

Picture of the week

The Defoe sisters on tour

Forget Gavin and Stacey coming back for Christmas. This is the really big telly news: The Split is returning for a two-part special airing later this year, which the BBC has just announced by releasing the photo above. Ooof, I loved this show. Three sisters and a battle-axe mother, set in a London law firm because two of the sisters and the battle-axe mother are divorce lawyers (I loved this show so much I made the heroine of my fourth novel a divorce lawyer in homage to it). So it’s a legal drama, but obviously all the main characters have their own relationship dramas going on at the same time. Believable and engrossing relationship dramas though (oh God, that bicycle accident).

Similarly-obsessed friends and I used to debate whether we were Team Nathan or Team Christie, which will only make sense if you’ve watched it but the GOOD NEWS is that you can do so for free (so long as you’re in the UK) because all three series are on iPlayer. Find them HERE if you need something new to watch. I can’t recommend it enough. I would watch Nicola Walker clip her toenails qf but in this she is particularly magnificent. As is Stephen Mangan. As is their kitchen in their Clapham house. Remember how we all lusted after their kitchen? Although we might not get to see much of the kitchen in this new special because it’s set in a Catalonian vineyard and someone’s getting married. I don’t want to let slip any spoilers but I REALLY hope it’s Rose and that nice vicar (forget that line immediately if you haven’t watched it yet).

Recommendations of the week

1. A couple of months ago, I ran out of this hair oil which I’ve used for years. So I googled it to buy another one and scowled quite hard when I saw how much it was - £45 for a bottle. WHAT? That seemed quite the mark-up on the last time I bought it. Admittedly that might have been because my friend Jenn, a beauty editor, gave me the last bottle. But still…too much to spend when I had another 2632 hair products littering my bathroom which I could use instead. Long story short, I relented last week and ordered another bottle because my hair felt like crap - dry, frizzy, dull. Hey presto, the oil instantly made it better. Softer, shinier, smoother. Here’s what I do - wash, condition, towel dry my hair, reach for the oil and whack on a couple of pumps (fnar fnar), dry it properly, then use another pump or two afterwards for extra sheen. I can’t bear it when beauty people wang on about a new miracle cream '(‘Botox in a bottle!’), then you reach the end of the article and discover it’s £926 because it’s made from the tears of a rare Himalayan mouse. So I hesitated about sticking the oil in here because it’s not cheap (although you can get a smaller 30ml bottle for more like £20), but in its defence it does last quite a long time. Also, it smells lovely. ALSO, it really works.

2. I went into my local bookshop a few days ago to buy a copy of Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny for a friend. If you haven’t read any Katherine Heiny please start with her cacklingly funny debut, Standard Deviation, and then move on to her equally funny but also very moving Early Morning Riser. Both novels set in contemporary America, they’re comic and wry and clever and just life enhancing (Heiny writes short stories too, I’m just less of a short stories person). Anyway, I give her books to people often as presents because I’d be so delighted if someone pressed a copy into my hands, so off I went to the bookshop where they didn’t have any in stock. ‘Have you tried Elinor Lipman?’ Justine the bookshop owner asked. ‘She’s Katherine Heiny adjacent.’ I hadn’t, and because I’m weak and literally unable to ignore someone’s recommendation in a shop (‘Oh that dress looks great on you!’ Ok, sure, I’ll buy this hideous thing because I don’t want a shop assistant I’ll never see again to think I’m rude…), I bought an Elinor Lipman for myself and a copy of Alice Winns’s In Memoriam instead of Katherine Heiny for my pal (another v good recent debut novel about love during World War One). And do you know what? Justine was right. Elinor Lipman is kind of like Katherine Heiny - and 10 Turpentine Lane is a kooky, funny, love story set in dilapidated bungalow, with an overbearing mother figure and a father who’s run off with a younger woman. I liked it v much if you’re in the market for that kinda thing.

3. PS. I’m obviously enormously biased, but my mum wrote this very beautiful piece for the Telegraph last week, having had the toughest few months imaginable. I’m always in awe of people who can find the space to make a joke in the face of bleak news or a rough period they’re going through. Laughter, at certain moments, is what you have to cling on to. I think maybe I’ve learned that from Mum, as you can see in her piece.

Nonsense of the week

Hackney’s the new Cotswolds, according to the latest issue of Tatler. Apparently this patch of East London is now more desirable than Charlbury and Banbury etc, and ‘Broadway Market is officially the new King’s Road.’ Now, no shade on Hackney. No shade on the Cotswolds. No shade on Broadway Market, but what I’m wondering is: has someone at Tatler recently bought a property in Hackney?

I know how these articles come about because we tried to do *exactly* the same thing at Tatler some years ago. A colleague of mine had recently bought a house in W12, just west of Shepherd’s Bush, where I also lived at the time. Both of us would subsequently declare in every features meeting that we needed to do a piece on how the area was ‘the new Notting Hill’. A Delevingne had recently bought a house there, Dominic West was three streets away, a bakery had just opened flogging the sort of fashionable sourdough that destroys the roof of your mouth, and all of this meant that W12 was The Hot New Place.

Unfortunately, our editor was too sensible to allow us to write this piece and saw through our feeble ploy every week, which was to try and boost the popularity of W12 and hike the property prices up. But perhaps someone at Tatler’s had more luck recently, because Hackney’s been pretty popular for quite a few years now, so this piece seems suspicious timing…