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Katie Price is set to become an aesthetics practitioner - and I use the word 'practitioner' very loosely.
Our general advice is to not go to Katie Price or any non-medic for any aesthetic treatment. Find a medically-qualified practitioner on Glowday.
Katie Price has revealed she is taking courses on how to administer lip filler and Botox to ensure she has a ‘proper job’.
She told fans on Instagram: ‘Also guys, just to let you know I have been studying the past six months ready to do my aesthetics course with Ellie. I can’t wait.
“You guys know I have been everywhere to do Botox, lips all sorts of things and I have finally found the perfect place where I want to train.’
Sigh. Katie's training is with Lift Aesthetics Training Academy. A quick look on its website reveals it has quite the line in 'online training'. Microdermabrasion and chemical peels virtually? Cool. It also offers an online 'Pathway To Injectables Course'. Pass this and you then get to go on the practical course. Lift stipulates you will also need a minimum of a Beauty Level 3 qualification, or SPMU (semi permanent make up) to attend. So presumably Katie's been doing one of these for the past six months.
Definitely looks legit.
Everything. Everything is the problem. Firstly, non medics should NOT be offering cosmetic treatments. Period. The fact *I* could do a course in permanent lip liner, then complete this training and immediately set myself up as an aesthetics practitioner, is absolutely criminal. To be honest, the fact this particular training school has *some* basic entry level requirements is novel (for some courses you don't need any experience in anything) but nonetheless still TOTALLY INSANE. It isn't the fact Katie Price can do this, it's the fact anyone can do this.
Lift Aesthetics doesn't detail who delivers the training. I suspect it's non-medics - other beauticians - training non medics. It could be a doctor, dentist or nurse. While it's the exception and not the norm, there are some medics who prescribe for and train non-medics. Being trained by a medical professional (although not sure how 'professional' a medic who trains non medics is) would offer a tiny tiny tiny drop of reassurance, it still doesn't give the course delegate the years of education and training in anatomy and physiology that that medic has had. It still doesn't give the delegate years of patient management training and experience. It still doesn't give the delegate experience in complications and crisis situations. And it still doesn't give the delegate any kind of accountability, at all, to any statutory or regulatory body.
I'm not here to throw shade on Katie Price. Katie isn't the problem. I'll come on to that. She's not technically doing anything wrong. The system is the problem, the industry, the lack of regulation and ultimately the Government. There's lots I admire about Katie. However, she's admitted she's obsessed with her appearance and addicted to changing it and to plastic surgery and cosmetic treatments. It's body dysmorphia. Is Katie best placed to be objective about a patient's face? To act in the best interest of the patient? To say 'no' when no is needed?
Plenty of women will. It doesn't really matter that she's Katie Price, it matters that Katie Price can easily set herself up as someone who can administer Botox and fillers. Katie will attract a lot of patients, because she's the Pricey. She has hundreds of thousands of fans. Let's not forget, also, that plenty of woman strive for Katie's 'look' and that's their ideal of beauty. So be it. I'm pretty sure if non-meds had never been allowed to offer cosmetic treatments such as Botox, lip fillers and fox eyes, her 'look' would be less ubiquitous. But we are where we are.
The fact Katie can do a course over a few months and set up a clinic is a reflection of how little Boris and his chums care about women and women’s safety. Not because it’s Katie Price but because Katie Price represents hundreds of thousands of beauticians, nail technicians, hairdressers, bank clerks, cleaners, accountants, marketing managers, shop owners and bakers (among other professions!) who can all legally offer Botox and fillers without any medical background or proof of any standards of training. She isn’t doing anything wrong, she isn’t any different from any non-medic offering these treatments, she might even be, artistically speaking, really effing good at filling lips and fixing frowns. She is doing the kind of training that thousands of non medics do. Yet you and I would never think about how robust that training is or who provided the training. We’re trusting and British. See a certificate and believe it must be valid because the Gov would never let them operate otherwise. Oh. But they do.
You will undoubtedly consider Botox and fillers as beauty treatments given so many beauticians offer them. This is where the Government has gone very very wrong. They are medical treatments using very potent toxins. It isn’t the fault of all these people just trying to earn a living and doing nothing at all illegal. It’s the fault of the Government.
The UK is letting women down. In other counties aesthetic treatments are regulated and can only be administered by a medical professional - someone who is accountable to a governing body, has years of training in the human body and who is competent with complications. Botox and fillers aren’t beauty treatments, they are medical treatments that address aesthetic concerns.
We want to empower women to embrace cosmetic treatments and educate women that they're very positive treatments (in the right hands!) and great work is natural and subtle. High profile celebrities, who prefer the fake and frozen look, do risk perpetuating the myth that everyone who has Botox and fillers looks the same. By being so easily allowed to become aesthetic practitioners, selling tweakments, it risks completely undermining the medical aesthetics industry. HOWEVER, if they were medically qualified, how they look, wouldn't be an issue.
To be fair we have no right to say the alienation of faces is bad. If that's what women want to look like and they're mentally competent to make an informed choice, and are choosing a safe injector, then, really, that's what feminism is all about.
We do want women to know, however, this look that they fear, isn't a true reflection of the aesthetics industry.
The real danger, then, is that by allowing non-meds like Katie Price to offer Botox and fillers, women's faces are messed up, more serious health problems emerge as a result and lives get ruined.
