Lip fillers: Aussie women have to stop the sausage-lips

WHO tells people like Married at First Sight’s Davina and Tracey they look attractive with a pair of cocktail frankfurts resting below their noses? When did we forget what normal lips looked like? Enough, writes Claire Harvey.

I CANNOT look away from Married At First Sight.

It’s not the power-bogan cast of characters fresh from the lunchtime queue at Port Macquarie Centrelink. It’s not even the desecration of everything sacred about matrimony.

It’s the lips.

Why do all these women have the lips of blow-up dolls? Who tells people like Davina and Tracey they look attractive with a pair of cocktail frankfurts resting below their noses? And when did we, as a nation, forget what normal lips looked like?

I’ll tell you when. Early 2016.

That’s the moment Australia’s lips went from Mick Dundee to Angelina Jolie, from Kermit the Frog to Miss Piggy. It’s when the insecure white people decided the path to self-assurance lay in adopting the facial features of Jay-Z.

Crucially, it’s when Kylie Jenner, the sweet-faced (white) baby sister of Kim and Khloe Kardashian, rocketed to global mega-fame with the ­assumption of Oprah Winfrey’s mouth.

Thin lips are a genetic cross to bear, but Davina from Married at First Sight is determined to fight nature.

Kylie plumped her lips to Kingdom Come with $10,000 worth of Juvederm, and in the shopping malls of suburban Australia there was rejoicing, for the Kardashian-inspired craze for cartoonishly giant features was complete.

Suddenly, every shopping mall was home to clinics abounding with injectables. Previously, it was mainly Botox, the muscle-freezing ­derivative of botulism that smooths wrinkles and enables one to maintain a calm-blue-ocean forehead even throughout minor car crashes and heavy air turbulence.

Suddenly, to fulfil a demand created almost entirely by Kylie and her sisters, “fillers” like Juvederm and Restylane were everywhere. These are hyaluronic acid, an injectable substance that does the job previously achieved by collagen and silicon, best known for ruining the beautiful faces of Meg Ryan, Lara Flynn Boyle, Priscilla Presley and Angelica Huston.

Ten years ago, both Khloe and Kim Kardashian looked relatively normal, except for slightly inflated lips. Now they both have enormous butts and gargantuan breasts, thanks to cosmetic surgeons. They also have the eyebrows of the Super Mario Bros, but that’s just makeup.

And, credit where it’s due, the world’s most influential sisters can just about pull it off, because they have enormous quantities of cash and can afford top-drawer surgery and injections from people with medical degrees.

Kylie Jenner would not accept lips of string, and now thousands of basic white girls are following suit. (Pic: Ethan Miller/Getty)

But Davina and Tracey from MAFS are getting their injections down at Westfield. And that’s why they both look like Ronald McDonald. The scene where ­Tracey confronted Davina about her “affair” with ­Tracey’s “husband” Dean (really just a few ­mildly erotic text messages and some hand-holding, I think) looked like it had been animated in Play-Doh. These women were trying to display emotion — I think Dav­ina attempted tears at one point — but all you could see were two pairs of paralysed caterpillars covered in lip-gloss.

Last year’s MAFS superstars, Michelle and Sharon Marsh, were the prototypes. The twins are ­naturally gorgeous, clearly, and have been careful to match their ­enhancements — like a gradual nuclear escalation ­between Cold War rivals — one injection and hair extension at a time.

At my local mall the other day, one of the beauty salons had a sign boasting: “Your favourite injector is here!” with a rather intimidating photo of a woman of vaguely Persian/Eurasian appearance.

This lady may, in fact, trace her genetic lineage back to Bournemouth — but the big-feature thing, influenced by the proud-to-be-Armenian Kardashian sisters, means every woman can stride out of Charleenz Beauty Spot looking confusingly exotic these days.

White Australia, like the rest of the Anglo-Celtic world, is by genetic determination thin-lipped. We wear the smiles of stick-figure drawings, not of gingerbread men. So please, let’s just own it.

Stop with the sausage-lips.

Emotion is much more ­attractive.