Face - Non Surgical Changes - Before + After

Hey everyone!

I wanted to do a bit of a blog talking through what I’ve lovingly nicknamed my surgery series and explain in a little detail the goals, the hopes and the treatments that I have undergone in the last ten years to get to more of a place of comfort.

Let’s take it back to the beginning - mirrors. Mirrors and I got on like a house on fire, I could see every minute detail of my face and paint on a version that made sense to my mind’s eye. However, what I began to control was a reflection, and as any artist knows, the composition of what you create totally changes when flipped. I was very much one of those people who denied cameras and photos, the irony of me being pushed into the world of modeling is not lost on me. But I hated photographs being taken of me and I developed quite a complex about reversing the images I would create.

To me, my nose was very crooked and indented. One of my eyelids was hooded, the other lifted. My top lip pulled towards the left, my bottom to the right creating a slanted smile. My face was totally asymmetric and fat that masked my bone structure was very minimal, which exacerbated everything to me. I could see each issue and although makeup was my medium, it was not a solution. I began to consult with surgeons and doctors, from the NHS to many well-branded cosmetic clinics and the unanimous response was - you do not need a nose job. I was infuriated and growing desperate as my job became very visible and my work on youtube had begun to grow at a pace I did not expect. So I researched and discovered a set of videos of nonsurgical rhinoplasty by the brand Botonics.

I reached out to Botonics with images, highlighting the difference in slants of my cheekbones, the volume was more pronounced on the left of my face than the right. My eye was less lifted on the right. The indents through the bridge of my nose and the tip that was pointing to the right. We agreed to the consultation and I met with the amazing Narushka, who readily explained what we could do without surgery. We did botox in the right eyebrow, the muscles of the forehead are sort of like if you put your hands together. You have one set of ‘fingers’ pulling up, then one set pulling down. By freezing the muscle pulling down, that area only has the option to pull up and that retrains your musculature to move. That basically was the first and only time I’ve had botox in this area and the eyelid has never needed a touch up. This hurt less than plucking an eyebrow and took about three weeks to show.

Next was the right cheek, no you should not get both cheeks augmented at the same rate, you should see which needs elevating or which vector needs to change, and adapt holistically. This was a deep injection with a thicker filler designed to lift, it feels a little bit like injecting cold syrup and despite having numbing cream on before, is a stinging sensation. We left the left side of my face untouched.

With the nose, it was a case of identifying the indents, injecting them to smooth the trunk of the nose out into a straight line, and then the really clever bit was going into the septum and under the right nostril with enough filler to lift the direction of the tip to a more central feature. It was beyond a stinging sensation and is very tender around the tip of the nose, which we did several times. This was basically laying the foundations up of my correction and when I got home, I couldn’t believe it. I felt remarkably content with the image I saw both looking back in a mirror, and in a camera screen.

To cut a long series of minor touch-ups short, I continued to work with Botonics and we did under-eye filler which was injected by cannula from an incision in the cheeks. That was by far the most dramatic change that I’ve had done. I did not love the look of the flatter under eyes and I thought it made my face look very done, so I left that. I’ve also noticed that there is a tendency for my under eyes and the areas that I had injected, to reflect blue which can happen in some people. I can easily amend this with makeup because it gives the look of a browner under eye, but the look is still improved from what I have. I had a little injected into the center of my chin, again this felt similar to the cheek. I had the right side of my lower lip injected to ‘push up’ against where my smile slanted down. This didn’t have a major impact on me at all. I also had botox in my massimer muscles, the muscles you use to chew and bite and this was very tough to inject, very strange to feel and not as dramatic on me, as I would have hoped. I tend to chew my teeth in my sleep and I have a built-up strength in my lower face that I hoped this would soften, but my jaw began to click so it wasn’t my favorite and I let this round wear off.

Another doctor I worked with was Dr. Ayad who is a surgeon that I found on Instagram, he was very precise with nose work and I thought he would be exciting to do a video with. I wasn’t a huge fan of the treatment, I felt that it was a bit strange as I wanted to create more of an invisible touch-up and we did an injection in the tip of my nose, a little in my chin and the tops of my cheeks. I had never at this point had cheek fillers in the left side of my face and I was quite unhappy with how structured it made me look, so I definitely wouldn’t have done that approach. We did have an injection straight into the face that numbed the area and the treatment was quick and painless, but the results were less fabulous than I had experienced previously.

Finally, I researched another doctor that I was very excited by, a lovely lady called Doctor Sarah Tonks at the Lovely Clinic. Dr. Tonks is a dentist and a doctor and is very aware of phi ratio, I was really interested in doing a video where we could talk through how to create proportion because I was not happy with the augmented look that I had received previously and we worked on how to reduce that appearance and create more symmetry in my face. She created a 3d model through a very clever piece of tech that gave me an image on the computer and we went through all the concerns I had mentioned. We decided to add a little to my jawline to create a rounded point, to my square. We did some work around my eyes with a vitamin mix with hyaluronic acid and we did a repeat of the massive muscles with botox. Doctor Tonks uses a very tiny needle which is virtually painless and I was impressed with the treatment. I felt much more natural-looking after and it was more so the results I had wanted.

I spent most of 2017-2018 selectively gaining weight. A very strange sounding process but for me, I have an optimum healthy weight and I have sadly a very low amount of facial fat. If I am healthy, my face is very thin and I wanted to find a happy medium. My theory was, create the proportion of fat I want in my face, remove the fat in the body with other treatments that I’ll mention in other blogs. That’s exactly what I did. So we worked on all the aforementioned treatments whilst I was also removing the fat from my body, and as of 2019 I lost the excess and we evened the results out to a place where I am happy and healthy.

I have very thick skin, in more ways than one - but no really. My skin has a lot of collagen in and it’s a hereditary thing, My sister is exactly the same and during her C section the doctor commented on it, so my assumption is that there is a lot of scars formed around the injection sites I’ve had that do the job of the filler, once the filler has been metabolized. Fillers are a type of sugar acid derived from grass. We have this in our skin anyway, and our body does not create a reaction to it, we can also dissolve it using an enzyme so it is very safe and helps a lot with the skin condition because it attracts water. The main brands have cross-linking bonds within the acid, they form like a gel pad and that is known as an injectable implant. They come in viscosities as thin as water and as thick as syrup. If you’ve ever seen a tv show about implants that have gone wrong, whether breast or others, you’ll notice that a common complaint is that the breast has capsulated which means, a scar was built around the implant and formed a tough sack-like material that distorts the shape. This happens with anything you have injected in your face. It is not a completely irreversible treatment and I get truly frustrated when people say that just because the filler dissolves after an age, you can reverse the results. You cannot reverse the scar tissue and in my case, I have never revisited the botox that lifted my brow and it is still lifted. I have never had the nose reinjected where I had deep indents, I have never had under my nose did again. My skin created scar sacks that do the job of what the filler did and I’m very lucky because I want a natural look.

One of my concerns with fillers, and the amount of work I’ve seen at influencer events is truly frightening - your face is mobile. You get a gel-like pocket of product injected into an area that moves, and not always by someone who works holistically (which means in lamens terms they’re selling you the amount of product to pay their bills and filling both sides of your asymmetric face with the same amount of product, unnecessarily.) It looks so bad around the mouth, around the cheeks, and every time you get a muscle frozen with botox your face is retraining the muscles to move in other ways. So you will not reduce all lines, you will create lines. You need to think about that because the most common mistakes for me, are sacks of gel sitting on the edge of the cheekbones, that are projected from the natural vector of the face. The areas above the lip line between the nose, which is the worst and most common thing I've seen, and finally when the lower face becomes lined because the upper face can’t express. You need to be realistic with this because it’s not a case of just upgrading a car, you’re adding things to your ever-moving face and what you look like in a photo is not what you look like in 3d.

Confidence is important, you should do whatever you want to create a sense of peace within your body, but be careful and err with caution. Know what can go wrong, there are very obvious disasters that can occur from hitting nerves, having an allergy to the product. A good practitioner will tell you this before, and it does not feel painless. Do not follow trends, you do not use the same amount of product to each side of the face, it is a sign of someone who does not understand proportion and keep it minimal.

I hope that gave some proper insight. Please check out my other blogs on this subject and feel free to leave some questions in the comments!