I got ‘painful’ lip filler — I can’t close my mouth months later

A British woman is warning others not to fall for social media’s lip service.

Harriet Green, 23, was horrified to receive botched “Love Island”-inspired lip filler that left her unable to close her mouth.

She was influenced to seek a plump pout after her TikTok feed was inundated with videos of Botox, filler and other cosmetic procedures.

“It is so common nowadays,” Green told SWNS. “I don’t judge people — when you have never had anything done before, you don’t know what you should be looking out for.”

She was pumped with 1.1 milliliters of filler in December 2022 by an establishment she claims told her to number her own lips, which is not standard practice.

“When I was getting my lips done, it was painful, but at that time I didn’t realize it is only painful when not done correctly,” continued Green, from Acle, Norfolk.

This was her first time undergoing a cosmetic procedure, she admitted, trusting the professional to know what’s best.

She experienced pain and bruising immediately after, which she was assured is normal.

“After all the bruising had gone, I had two hard lumps on my lip — one on the left and one on the right,” she explained. “It made me feel so much more self-conscious — it was painful and uncomfortable.”

The “hard lumps” wouldn’t allow her to close her lips completely — even three months after the procedure.

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“I stopped going to the woman, as I was annoyed, and people close to me started commenting on how my lips didn’t look good,” she added, recalling how “swollen” they remained. “They said they could see unevenness in my lips and could see two lumps on the top tip.”

While she paid around $125 for the initial filler, the three procedures to correct it totaled more than $800.

Green was able to get her kissers back to normal after the filler “was injected into the wrong place.”

“I had to go back three times before [the doctor] could add new filler to my lips,” she said. “I have been lucky, don’t get me wrong, I still have lumps in my mouth, but people have had it a lot worse.”

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“But now you can’t even tell I have had them done, as I have had them done properly,” she added.

Green vows to never undergo another procedure, warning others of the “minefield” cosmetic surgery industry.

“It is important to research the person, don’t just go off social media pictures like I did,” she advises. “Look for healed pictures of someone’s lips, not just fresh off the needle as they will look nice and plump straight after.”

She blames social media and reality television, such as “Love Island,” for influencing unrealistic beauty standards and aesthetic procedures.

It’s rare, she said, to see people who are “natural,” whether online or on TV, and its popularity makes it “appealing to others.”

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Botox,” which inevitably convinced her to receive her own filler.

“It seems like such a normal thing to do now — that is the problem,” she said.