Kooky & Creams

With an en masse rush to the gym in January that always dwindles off because gyms are warm, scary and smelly, a bit like the cave where they keep the Kardashians that didn't make the cut. It all kicks off again right about now, as most of us are guilty of being far too hard on ourselves at the prospect of being in swimwear. Newsflash: we have to live our lives EVERY DAY and we are in the aforementioned bathing garms for two weeks max. What should take priority?

It's an apple-shaped silicone lip plumper, recently launched in the US and UK and rumoured to be behind Kylie Jenner's chunky chops. By placing your mouth inside and pumping the base, it creates suction that pulls your lips into the hollow and causes temporary swelling. There's a blocker to isolate individual lips, avoiding the Pete Burns symmetry that few naturally plump lips have, and the green apple model has a double lobe - creating the slight ridge in the bottom lip that Angelina Jolie has. I tried the red apple, which plumps the lips evenly.

Pitched at city girls after a spray tan or mani/pedi before a big weekend, or rinsed-out workaholics looking for some much-needed downtime - I fall into the latter category - the spa's extensive range of treatments will please even the most ardent beauty boffin.

The first weeks back at work after Christmas are consistently rubbish. You have to sit up properly instead of sleepily reclining. You've sworn to eat healthily, while a landfill's worth of chocolate protrudes out of every available cupboard. You're having trouble adjusting to wearing a bra again, and don't even get me started on the amount of showering required. Utter rubbish.

My earliest memory of semi-permanent makeup is standing in Buchanan Galleries in the late noughties watching a woman that couldn't have been any more Glaswegian if she had a cone on her head getting a makeover by some sponsored 'fashionistas'. The beauty guru was narrating the scene as she tried to remove the excited participant's makeup in front of the assembled throng. She was finding her deep purple-outlined lips particularly troublesome to remove when the woman uttered the fateful "they're tattooed on, hen." All of the experts looked visibly crestfallen as they realised they could take off all the gold jewellery, sort out her spiky fringed-mullet, but they'd never sort out her red-wine gob.

Transitioning from a very normal, functional mouth into an undulating, ruby red pout three times its previous size, her gob has been the source of much speculation and scorn.

Not content with the DIY option, we've also turned to beauty therapists up and down the land to painstakingly attach individual semi-permanent lashes to our lashline. What if there was an alternative? Good news - there is.

Unfortunately, in terms of supply and demand, there's massive demand for quick-fix weight loss products and a whole host of (in my opinion) shady businesses looking to hook you up with a bag of magic bean supplements or enchanted lamp shake shaker that you vigorously rub to get your wish of dropping a few pounds. The scariest thing is the salespeople for these 'miracle' products won't stop you in a shopping centre or stare back at you in magazines. They're on your Facebook - someone you went to school with or worked with in that summer job you got sacked from for stealing a box of something. It's a familiar face, someone you have friends in common with, and that comforting familiarity is all part of the ruse.

As terrifying as it was, when the same thing happened to my feet, I took a shameful perverse pleasure out of it.

In a world where weddings have hashtags and you spend your evenings browsing pictures of what strangers are eating for dinner, photography as we know it has changed. And it's not for the better.