A generation of girls are wrecking their faces

Messing with the face your mum gave you was once only for the rich, but cut price shopping mall injectables now mean every chick can look like she’s having an anaphylactic reaction, writes Claire Harvey.

All I want for Christmas is wrinkles around my mouth.

I want deep grooves from my nose to the corners of my mouth; my eyeshadow to feather into the creases around my eyes; a permanent furrow where my carefree forehead used to be.

Santa baby, bring me the natural face of a lady in early middle age who may or may not have dabbled in solariums in her 20s, and I promise I will be a good girl.

I won’t despise my eyelids. I will welcome, rather than fear, the softening of my jawline.

And I think I’m going to look all the classier for it, for this year I have come to a realisation.

Lip filler is the new tramp stamp. Flatscreen foreheads are the new acrylic fingernails. The mall-ification of injectables has resulted in first the democratisation, and now the complete trailer-parkification, of procedures that once were limited to Hollywood stars.

Nothing says “Where’s my ice pipe?” quite like lips so bulbous you can’t close your mouth.

And the tragedy — just like with cigarettes and Burberry bumbags — is that the people wasting their money on this crap are the very people who can’t afford it.

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Walk around my local mall and every second chick behind a cash register appears to be having an anaphylactic reaction to something.

And it breaks my heart for them, because they don’t know where to stop, and they’re definitely not becoming more attractive.

They’re becoming — whisper this because it’s a really horrible result for these people, who have no idea — more masculine.

They look like blokes. Their skin looks raw and pore-ridden, like the outside of a ham before Mrs Claus glazes it with honey.

They get new, unimagined fissures at the corners and edges of their face-planes, deep crevasses they can’t see from the length of a selfie-stick, which are much worse than the wrinkles they’re trying to avoid.

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On the way to Kylie Jenner, they turned into Rex Mossop.

Now I’m not in any way opposed to a little visit from the Botox fairy or a sprinkling of golden highlights (hello).

If you need a total dental overhaul, even if it costs more than a Toyota Yaris, just get it. There’s no natural high that can compete with a makeover.

But, for the love of God, spend the money.

Never economise on something that comes in a hypodermic syringe.

(Or on tinned tuna, by the way. There’s a lot of great homebrand stuff but tuna ain’t one).

And please, stop while you can still demonstrate an emotion.

“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” Who said that? The magnificent Dolly Parton, of course.

She followed up with: “Don’t just go looking through the Yellow Pages to find a plastic surgeon; you need to get somebody you know is good.”

Quite right.

But now even Dolly is morphing into RuPaul, and we need an addendum to Dolly’s immortal line: “And quit while you’re still all woman.”

Claire Harvey is the deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph.

@chmharvey