The enormous popularity of beauty treatments, including dermatological fillers and Botox injections, is not solely an issue for health regulators.
Really?
Wes Streeting’s announcement of new licence requirements for UK businesses, and tighter regulation of higher-risk treatments, is probably overdue. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute recently warned that untrained people have given cosmetic injections in public toilets and hotels.
Look, if you’re stupid enough to let people do this to you, and judging by the results (I saw a woman on the Tube last week with such a pronounced trout pout I was worried if the train braked sharply and she fell face first against the window, she’d have to be pried off by firemen), you are, then I’m not sure why we should be doing any more than regulating it. Apart from the drain on the NHS, of course…
Altering the law in order to exclude such “rogue operators” ought to make high streets and the internet – where many clinics advertise – safer. But councils will need resources if they are to be expected to enforce new rules by issuing licences, checking premises and so on. As in many other areas of economic activity, the law on its own is unlikely to be enough. Mechanisms are needed to ensure that businesses comply.
That’s the case for all legislation, of course, and usually why it fails. But why are people doing this in the first place?
Changing norms and aspirations about appearances, and the way that these are marketed mainly to women and girls, are a cultural and economic phenomenon that requires wider consideration.
Ah, of course, the internet and social media are making them do it. Strange how it’s always something the government and progressives are desperate to control, eh, Reader?
