Aged 17, Anna Russell decided she wanted to look like her celebrity idols.
However, after embarking on a lip filler journey, she faced nearly three years of discomfort with ‘botched’ lips and shattered confidence.
Anna, who is from Edinburgh, was left with uneven lips and lumps of ‘unknown’ filler spreading across her face in the aftermath.
And now the 22-year-old has backed a government ban preventing all Botox treatments for under-18s amid growing concern about the number of teens wanting cosmetic enhancements.
Anna believes she was too young to make a rational decision about getting fillers at the time, and thinks the same goes for all youngsters.
Campaign group Save Face said complaints about botched procedures had jumped nearly ten-fold in five years with 2,083 last year, up from 217 in 2016.
Meanwhile, following a ‘Love Island’ surge that led to more than 41,000 procedures being carried out on under 18s last year, the government intervened.
Health minister Nadine Dorries says age checks would have to be carried out before such procedures.
Meanwhile, practitioners could face prosecution if they fail to comply.
Anna recalls that she believed her lips to be ‘too thin.’ However, after going through the cosmetic treatment, she cried every day.
A doctor then told her the ‘unknown substance’ she was given had been injected incorrectly.
‘I’m really happy the ban has gone through as it’s such a big decision to make when you’re 17,’ Anna explains.
‘I knew about the new law last year when they were trying to pass it and it has to be a good thing. I have always been quite conscious of my lips because they are quite naturally thin.
‘It did become a trend with people my age and I saw others doing it and liked it. I had it done a couple of days before my 18th birthday, and found the girl that did it on Facebook.
‘I told her that I was 17 and she said it was fine.’
She continues: ‘But it’s 100% too young. I think when you’re 17 or 18 you do think that you know what’s best for you and you know everything.
‘When I think back to the tattoos I thought I wanted at 17 and 18 I think ‘thank god I didn’t get that now.’
The damage caused by the lip fillers has also severely impacted her life and confidence.
‘It completely warped my self-image because I was already insecure when they looked like that,’ she says.
‘It changed the way my whole face looked and how I felt about my face. For ages, I didn’t even look at myself In photos.’
Eventually, Anna decided to visit a plastic surgeon about getting the fillers dissolved. She asked if he would refill them but the surgeon advised she would not be fully developed for fillers until she was 21.
‘I would say to any young person just wait, so much can change in a year so the way you feel right now, you might not feel the same way in 12 months’ she urges.
‘You make such rash decisions at that age and mine were botched for three years.’
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