I dread the ‘What do you do?’ question, because when I say that I’m a journalist and I run a website about nonsurgical cosmetic procedures, there’s always a pause. So I crash on, ‘You know, things like fillers and toxins, lasers, skin peels…’
That’s often the end of the conversation.
Tweakments like Botox may now be part of the vernacular, but it’s still a topic that alarms people. Some, though, will stare at my face and ask, ‘So, have you tried any of these things?’
Have I tried anything? I’ve tried pretty well everything.
I never set out to become the tweakments guinea pig. I’ve been a journalist since university. By the late 1990s I was writing about health and beauty when my editor told me to investigate the new anti-ageing injections that surgeons, doctors and nurses were using to plump lips and cheeks or soften frown lines.
UK beauty journalist Alice Hart-Davis says what she’s learned about ‘tweakments’ through her years as a beauty writer
I was curious, but too cautious to try anything. However, I was also in my late 30s with three small children, full-time work and felt – and looked – exhausted. Though friends were horrified by all this stuff, I began to wonder if it would be so bad to try it.
When I interviewed Dr Rita Rakus – by 2002 already being hailed the London Lip Queen for her skill with injections – she popped a spot of filler in my smile lines. I looked amazing. Fresher. Younger. Two years later, when my mother chided me once too often for looking anxious, I stepped up for Botox.
I didn’t know it would open up a whole new career path.
As the tiny niche of ‘aesthetic medicine’ expanded fast, with the arrival of more fillers and skin-conditioning injections, new toxins and a bewildering array of radiofrequency, ultrasound and plasma devices to tighten and improve the skin (it’s now worth over £3 billion annually), I tried the procedures out and wrote about them in detail.
As a journalist, I’m intrigued to know how these treatments work, what it feels like to have them done and whether they do what they claim to do. But there was also my vanity. I can’t deny that then, and now, I want to look as good as I can. I also know that because of the stigma that still surrounds cosmetic treatments, few people will talk about it. If they do, they invariably gloss over the details of what it’s like having needles in your face, or how swollen you may look after a high-energy treatment with laser or radiofrequency. Not talking about it drives the topic underground. I’ve been trying to open up the conversation around tweakments for 20 years, not least because in the UK there are so few regulations.
Anyone – you or me or the plumber – can equip themself with fillers and needles and start injecting people without any legal requirement to demonstrate competence or safe practice. So, if you don’t research the subject or find a good practitioner, you may regret it.
But back to me. I’m now 60 and having an awful lot more done than I used to. Regular followers worry that I’m doing too much, but I reckon it’s maintenance, like painting the Forth Bridge. By the time I’ve damped down my frown lines, propped up my contours with fillers, had skin-conditioning injections, cleared away thread veins and sun damage and tried some new skin-tightening procedures, it’s time to start all over again. And, yes, I’m immensely lucky to have access to so many treatments by the best practitioners. I couldn’t possibly afford them myself.
New followers are puzzled about why, if I’m doing all the stuff I talk about, I don’t look like the Bride of Wildenstein. But here’s the thing about tweakments. You don’t notice the good work. It just leaves you looking like yourself, but better, which is why I still get asked whether I’ve ever tried anything, because I look pretty normal.
The upside? I look more rested and youthful than I have any right to (a healthy lifestyle helps) and, on a good day, my skin measures ten years younger than my age. I’ve also set up The Tweakments Guide website to outline which treatments do what, and what it’s like to have them done.
The downside? My close friends don’t get it. ‘But there must be other things you could write about,’ one asked. ‘Surely you don’t have to mutilate yourself in order to get an article in print!’ Online comments are more judgey: ‘You looked better before’, or ‘You need to stop all that BS and work on your self-esteem’ are common.
I’m still always excited to try the next new thing, even though some procedures mean a lot of bruising and downtime. When I had fat extracted from my thighs and injected into my face four years ago, my face was stiff and sore for weeks. This summer, I had an intense plasma-energy treatment (to tighten and smooth my skin) after which I looked awful – swollen, bruised, oozing – though in each case, I knew exactly what I was in for.
And yet I remain slightly terrified when I clamber on to the treatment couch, aware that this could be the procedure that goes horribly wrong and leaves me wearing a paper bag on my head for the rest of my days.
THE UPSIDE? I LOOK MORE YOUTHFUL, AND AT 60 MY SKIN MEASURES TEN YEARS YOUNGER THAN MY AGE
Tweakments can and do go wrong. Hearing about many of the laser burns and fat-freezing bruises that my colleagues have endured, I often think I’ve been lucky. But I’ve had disasters too. When I tried a new, thicker filler that offered an ‘instant boob job’ in 2007, it set into hardened lumps (eventually it dissolved). Six years later, I tried a new Botox alternative that killed a part of the nerve leading to the forehead muscles, so that the nerve signal telling those muscles to raise couldn’t get through. It worked on one side of my face, but not on the other – so for three months I had a face where only half my forehead could move. Nobody noticed until I pointed it out, bouncing my one working eyebrow at them. Then they were appalled.
Luckily the nerve regrew itself over the next three months, and my forehead returned to normal. And yes, I wrote at length about both of those procedures, neither of which is still on offer.
Then, in November 2020, I tried a procedure where a skin-tightening laser was used close to my eyes, so as per the standard protocol, I had ocular shields, which are like metal contact lenses, popped into the eyes for protection. It’s hard to say what went wrong – too little lubrication? Or were they left in too long? – but once the anaesthetic eye drops wore off, my eyes were too painful to open. A visit to a corneal surgeon revealed that a 6mm by 8mm patch of epithelium – basically, the eyeball skin – had been ripped off each eye, something that my laser-practitioner friends, who use these things all the time, say never happens. Maybe I was just very unlucky.
Recovery took months. Looking back, I was in such a state of shock that I wasn’t so bothered that I could hardly see. I was patched up with ‘bandage’ contact lenses to protect the cornea, anaesthetic drops so I could open my eyes a bit, and steroid drops. The corneal specialist assured me that it would heal, and it did. I stayed in bed, feeling shut down mentally and physically, waiting to feel better.
I was so breathless and shaky that I could barely function.
You’d think this might have put me off, but it hasn’t, even though I now notice how much procedures take out of me. I may think a few jabs of this or that isn’t much, yet my body wants a little sit-down afterwards.
But am I planning to stop? Goodness, no. And will I end up with a paper bag on my head?
I don’t think so. But if I do, rest assured – I’ll tell you about it.
thetweakmentsguide.com
