BRYONY GORDON: Women are dying from weight-loss jabs and Brazilian butt lifts… and I do know why

What price perfection? It’s a question I ask every time I read another tragic story about a woman who’s flown abroad for cosmetic surgery, only to be returned in a body bag.

In the past week, there have been two separate inquests into the deaths of British women who went to Turkey for the purposes of ‘health tourism’ – a horribly euphemistic and misleading term to describe the practice of going abroad for operations you can’t afford (or wouldn’t be allowed) in your own country.

Pictures of Hayley Dowell show a smiling, beautiful young woman with everything to live for. She was just 38 when she travelled to Istanbul in October last year for a tummy tuck, liposuction and a Brazilian Butt Lift, or BBL as it is even more casually known. The BBL involves removing fat from one area of the body then transferring it to the buttocks – the idea, apparently, is to end up looking a little more like Kim Kardashian or JLo.

It’s the fastest growing cosmetic procedure in the world, but also the most dangerous, with one in 4,000 procedures resulting in death. So risky is it, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons has in the past advised its members not to carry it out.

Tragically, Dowell suffered an embolism after the £7,000 surgery. ‘There was not any risk outlined to her,’ said Dowell’s husband, Neil, who’d accompanied her to Turkey. ‘It should have been a six-hour operation but it wound down to one hour 45 [minutes]. The surgeon left halfway through and left the anaesthetist to do the job.’

He added that the company asked him to sign his wife’s consent forms only after she had passed away.

Dowell is one of six Brits who died in Turkey last year after medical procedures, most of which were of the cosmetic variety.

Another, Janet Lynne Savage, 54, went there as part of a package offered by a health travel company, only to bleed to death after her gastric sleeve weight-loss surgery went terribly wrong.

The mother of two had told Regenesis Health Travel she could no longer access Ozempic, and was worried she was gaining weight. But, like Dowell, pictures of Savage show a beaming, beautiful woman – one whose life ended in part because of the terrible pressure we put on ourselves to look ‘perfect’.

It’s easy, of course, to pretend these things only happen in places like Turkey. But they don’t. Alice Webb, a 33-year-old mother of five, died in Gloucestershire in September after undergoing a ‘liquid’ BBL at a British clinic. The non-surgical cosmetic industry – responsible for all those ‘tweakments’ that are now as normal as getting your hair done – is almost entirely unregulated.

And last week the first death in the UK linked to weight-loss jabs was reported. Susan McGowan passed away in September after taking Mounjaro — the drug was listed as a contributory factor in her death.

While there’s no suggestion she’d done anything other than follow correct procedures, using a registered pharmacy for her prescription, numerous investigations have found the jabs being sold illegally online, to people already a healthy weight, who don’t need them.

I could fill this whole column with stories of women maimed in pursuit of unobtainable beauty ideals. Because for all the talk of body positivity, the truth is we live in an age that puts far more value on a person’s physical appearance than it does their health.

Social media has made it almost unbearable to be a young woman today, ushering in an era in which likes and shares and approval are a universal currency, used by anyone with an Instagram or TikTok account. It’s not enough to slap on some mascara and smile for the camera – now, you also need a flattering ring light and a crash course in photography to make sure you’re capturing everyone’s best angles.

Photoshop was once the preserve of glossy magazines and models. Today, filters and AI editing apps are everyday tools on our phones, leaving a generation feeling disappointed every time they look in a mirror, or see an unedited photo of themselves.

But while editing photos is one thing, editing your actual body is quite another.

So how to turn the tide and stop people from feeling like they have to undergo dangerous ops in order to be accepted? Well, for a start, we need to change the culture so it’s not unusual to post pictures filter-free. We cannot have a generation whose self worth is based entirely on digitally-altered images that bear little or no resemblance to reality.

France has a good handle on this. Last year it became the first European country to formally regulate influencers, and now French social media users must state if images have been retouched, or created with the help of artificial intelligence.

The law also bans the promotion of cosmetic surgery. Those who break the law face up to two years in prison, or a £250,000 fine.

It might seem a bit steep. But as the families of all the people who have died getting low-cost cosmetic surgery will no doubt tell you, it’s impossible to put a price on a life.

Brave Louise puts the ‘real’ in reality star

I’m a big fan of Made In Chelsea star and the Mail’s You magazine columnist Louise Thompson, whose health struggles led to her needing a stoma earlier this year. Now she’s been rushed for more emergency surgery.

‘Despite the surgery, the butt drain, the catheter, the stoma…’ she posted on Instagram this week, ‘there have been beacons of kindness everywhere… Thank goodness for modern medicine.’

Louise is that rare thing – a reality TV star who is actually real, and doesn’t varnish the truth.

Here’s wishing her the speediest of recoveries.

My new secret weapon when facing sexist GPs

Regular readers will know I’ve struggled to be taken seriously in the past, with a case of atrial fibrillation being dismissed by doctors as anxiety. Now, however, I’ve found the answer to medical misogyny: being able to present the GP with my own data – via my Apple Watch.

It took years to get my irregular heart beat diagnosed, but things are much easier now that my watch alerts me when things aren’t quite right. Last week, a notification popped up telling me that my heart had been in atrial fibrillation 20 per cent of the time, causing me to call my GP, who immediately referred me to the hospital.

Within hours, I’d been seen by doctors, had an ECG, and been dispatched with a treatment plan that has got things under control. I never thought I’d say this, but thank goodness for Big Tech.

• There’s been much excitement that the Booker Prize has been won by a British woman, Samantha Harvey. But I’m far more thrilled that it’s been won by a novel that is only 136 pages long!  

Cashing in on Castle Cary

My sympathies are with the locals in Castle Cary, Somerset, where the burger van at the station has been replaced with a posh cafe called The Creamery, selling £12 focaccia and mozzarella starters and cider spelt with a ‘y’ (a sure sign things have taken a turn for the artisan worse). But the worst bit? A coffee will set you back a whopping £3.80 – almost as much as a latte in the swankiest parts of central London.

Confidence clinic

Have you heard about the life-changing benefits of adopting the superhero pose? Yep, apparently standing tall with your hands on your hips gives you more confidence, and actually lowers cortisol. Do it in tricky situations, and feel like the superwoman you absolutely are.