The Sunday Times Magazine • 37At 16 she did her first sponsored post for
a clothing brand and got paid £25. Today
she receives offers in six figures for “brand
partnerships”. In her book she writes
about turning down a £2 million offer from
a clothes label because it wouldn’t have
been an “authentic move”.
“I feel a huge responsibility,” she says
of her profile, especially owing to the
demographic of her fanbase and the platform
she uses. According to leaked internal
research conducted by Facebook, which
owns Instagram, the app makes body
image worse for one in three girls. “Every
time I see my followers go up, I think, that’s
more young girls who are looking at my
product day to day, and I need to be very
aware of how my content could affect them.”
Hague has had her own direct struggles
with body image. After MailOnline
published unflattering photos of her in a
bikini, which led to commenters calling
her “lardy” (Hague was a size 8 at the time),
she phoned the newspaper’s customer
service line begging them to take the
pictures down. “It isn’t a normal thing for
a 22-year-old girl to deal with.”
She also started getting fillers when she
was 17 and, after leaving Love Island, had a
“full package” involving “God knows” what
volume of injectables in her cheeks, jaw and
lips for £500. Trolls said she looked “like an
Xbox controller”, lumpy and plastic. After
this she decided to have them dissolved —
a process that involves injecting an enzyme
that breaks down the filler — filming the
appointment for her YouTube channel.
“It was a big thing for me to be honest
about that. I was embarrassed, but I realised
other girls are going through this as well.
This could really be a bit of a movement.”
Does she think she would have had the fillers
if she hadn’t been in the public eye? “I don’t
know. At the end of the day, it happened
— and I’m so blessed that I could fix it.”
On the call today she looks fresh-faced
and pretty without make-up. She also
appears very young, more like the teenager
she was when she joined social media
than a twentysomething boss bitch —
an image she has been pushing recently.
I ask what her role as creative director of
PrettyLittleThing involves, expecting her
to enthuse about her burgeoning profile as
a businesswoman and the fact that she is,
as she says, “so much more” than an
Instagrammer now.
However, at this point her manager, Fran
Britton — who is on the call and every bitas aggressively glamorous as her client —
jumps in. “That’s a big misconception with
the role, that people think she’s involved in
all aspects of the business. And that isn’t the
case.” All Hague brings, Britton says firmly,
is the “creative vision” — a vision that
includes multiple stretch-jersey separates
and, this season, a green polyurethane
blazer. I assume the reticence is because
PrettyLittleThing was exposed in a 2020
Sunday Times investigation that found it was
using factories in Leicester that paid well
below the minimum wage. PLT says it has
since strengthened its supplier standards.
I try again, asking Hague how important
reputation is when she is choosingSHE HAD “GOD KNOWS” WHAT INJECTABLES IN
HER CHEEKS, JAW AND LIPS FOR £500. TROLLS
SAID SHE LOOKED “LIKE AN XBOX CONTROLLER”
From top: Hague was paid £25 for her first
sponsored Instagram post in 2015, aged 16;
the star before her lip fillers were dissolved
in 2020 — a procedure filmed on YouTubeMy parents were strict but after
they divorced, I felt that I could
get away with murder ... and I did
for a few years! In the end, though,
I screwed myself over because that’s
how the lip fillers came about.
I first came across fillers on
Instagram, social media and TV.
I thought that if I got lip fillers, I’d
take better pictures and get more
followers. At the age of 18 I got my
lips done. I got 0.5ml of filler that
first time and I liked the result.
I didn’t tell Mum at first but when
I eventually came clean, she was
nice about it. “It doesn’t look bad,”
she said. “If you’d told me you were
going, I would have imagined you
with blow-up doll lips!”
But I didn’t stop there. The next
time I had 1ml of filler, which was
too much. My lips looked like they
were about to burst.
Then I went for the full-face
package: cheek filler, jaw filler and
lip filler. The lips were one thing but
putting filler in different parts of my
face was dangerous. It changed the
way I looked but I was in a vicious
circle. I just kept going back for
more every six months.
After I came out of Love Island,
I opted for another full-face package.
That was the big one! I remember
the girl was injecting 2ml here, 2ml
there. In other words, I had loads.
Soon after, I was in LA for a shoot
and I needed to film the sign-off
from my vlog. As I’d had all that
filler injected the day before, my
face was sore and swollen. It looked
horrendous. Someone took a
screenshot from that video and it
went viral. “What’s Molly done to
her face?” was the response. I was
mortified. The reality was that my
once-sharp jawline had jowls
hanging underneath, my lips felt
lumpy, uneven and unnatural.
I knew the swelling would go
down but I realised the only way I
was going to go back to looking like
myself was if I dissolved the fillers. I
didn’t feel prettier. I didn’t feel better.
Filler had made me feel worse.© Molly-Mae Hague 2022.
Becoming Molly-Mae is published
by Ebury on June 9 at £20“What’s Molly done
to her face?” My
filler adventures
➤
COURTESY OF MOLLY MAE