For some reason, women hide how much effort they put into looking the way they do, from skin care, hair extensions, filters, eating habits, botox and sometimes even how hard they work out, well some of us that is. It’s like they want everyone to think “oh she #wokeuplikethis.”

Not me. I never wake up like this. I cover up my dark circles, I have to shower daily thanks to an overactive oily scalp, I use benzoyl peroxide face wash 2x a day to help with pimples (and pimple stickers if you don’t know about these you SHOULD) I work out 3ish times a week, I try to eat as many greens as possible and I have botox in my forehead and botox and filler in my lips and I do this all for me.

A while ago, I did my first botox treatment and lip filler treatment.

Then I did a lip flip with no filler and just recently I did a lip flip with filler and I’m here to explain and show you photos if this all sounded like a foreign language to you.

I’ve always had what you call – or all the kids in school would call – a gummy smile. The amount of my gums showing directly correlates with the amount of happiness I’m feeling. Literally, the more the merrier.

Over the years I would try to practice not over smiling for school photos, but you know how quickly they make you sit, smile and move on and you don’t even get to see the photo for a re-do?! How does the younger generations handle this?!

Anyways “Lip filler is done with a soft tissue filler injected into the skin at different depths to help fill in facial wrinkles, provide facial volume, and augment facial features: restoring a smoother appearance. Most of these wrinkle fillers are temporary because they are eventually absorbed by the body.” Pictured below is just lip filler and this smile is still “practiced.”

A Lip flip is done with Botox injections which block certain chemical signals from nerves, mostly signals that cause muscles to contract. The most common use of these injections is to temporarily relax the facial muscles that cause wrinkles in the forehead and around the eyes and in my case, a gummy smile. It helps so when you do smile, your lip doesnt “fold in and up.”

Which here in the photo above, you can see just my lip flip which did wonders on the gummy smile but my lips still caved in on the sides a little when the happiness went into overdrive. Which is why the combination for me worked wonders. Pictured in the photo below.

A lip flip doesn’t only have to be for a gummy smile either, it also helps give your lips fullness without filler because the botox helps with muscles relax which allows the lip to flip upwards (hence the name lip flip) showing more of the pink portion and giving the lip a fuller and plumper appearance without adding volume to the lip.

If anyone is in South Florida area, Ashley at Beauty by Nüvo You MedSpa – Miami Beach is hands down the best. I’ve had 5+ experiences with injections and nothing compares to the thought and care that they put into each person’s unique needs and wants.

For those of you who have had lip injections before know HOW PAINFUL IT CAN BE, even with numbing creams. Ashley and her team go above and beyond. They use different techniques and it was basically painless. Yeah, you read that correctly.

Oh and she’s pretty funny too. 🙂 https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClSetHagbNj/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Also, she did not ask me to say or pay me to say any of this. This is just my attempt in normalizing the choices we can make for ourselves and there’s no need to feel guilty about it. If you have a gummy smile too and love it, more power to you. I support that. This was just something I have always wanted to do, for me.