Absolutely - because I've had to talk myself out of it and "good politics" isn't always enough.
First argument: It's more permanent than people realize. Filler doesn't actually dissolve. It migrates. They've done imaging on this, MRIs and stuff. Although the desired effects of the filler might not be visible on the face anymore, the filler is still present in the body. It has migrated deeper and into other places in the face. It also has the potential to expand over time. Fillers are forms of hyaluronic acid, which is a hydrophilic molecule - meaning it attracts water and swells up. As it migrates deeper into the skin, it could be attracting more water. We don't really know. The fact is, you have absolutely no way of knowing what that filler is going to do when it gets into your body. (Here's a consumer-oriented industry blog article on the subject, which I think has a decent balance of science and accessibility, but feel free to google 'filler migration mri' and pick whatever source you think she'll listen to.)
And sure, you can get filler dissolved. They use an enzyme that breaks up hyaluronic acid. Hey, did you know that hyaluronic acid is naturally present in the connective tissues of your body? The enzyme doesn't know the difference between the natural and the store-bought stuff. So sure, you can get your filler dissolved - if you know exactly where it is, and only use exactly enough of the enzyme to dissolve the filler, and you get lucky enough that your own body doesn't become collateral damage.
Second argument: Speaking of "we don't really know," let's talk about how fast and loose the cosmetic surgery industry plays with the science and health impacts. Silicone breast implants have been around since the 60s, and they've been the most popular and well-studied cosmetic procedure since then. The industry didn't start acknowledging health risks of rupture and leakage until the early 1980s. They didn't start acknowledging potential risks of cancer associated with them until the 1990s, and they continue to insist that implants in general are perfectly safe and non-carcinogenic (you know, except the textured ones - really can't spin that data any other way) to this day.
And despite the fact that accounts of strange symptoms consistent with systemic inflammation after breast implants have been reported in the medical literature since at least the early 1990s (commonly called "Breast Implant Illness"), the cosmetic surgery industry still, to this day, insists that there's no such thing and any apparent link between breast implants and poor health comes from the fact that women who get breast implants are shallow, crazy, unhealthy whores. (Seriously.)
HA fillers are much younger, only really hitting the market in the 90s, and don't have half the research because they're less medicalized. Wanna roll the dice?
Third argument: Facial harmony and cascading interventions.
I'm willing to acknowledge that this doesn't always happen. Sometimes, the stars align. You get a great aesthetic provider, you have realistic expectations, you make careful choices, your body takes filler well, you do a very small amount of filler, and the results look great. A lot of celebrities have had filler, and a lot of them look fine. Does your friend have the ability to go see who the celebrities see? If not, probably not worth it. Because not all celebrities end up looking fine, either.
One of the most important elements of facial aesthetics is harmony. Your face has to look like it makes sense together. Your face doesn't look the way it does by accident. You look the way you do because of your underlying bone structure and genetic predisposition to fat and muscle distributation. That's why we can do facial reconstruction.
When you start getting cosmetic procedures, it is very easy to do something that makes your face stop making sense. Sometimes these effects are minor, especially if you're doing something that only affects soft tissue/cartilage, like a minor nose job. Jennifer Grey is the best example here. Her post-rhinoplasty nose doesn't look bad. It doesn't look entirely out of place on her face. It wasn't a huge change. By all accounts, that was a great nose job. But she doesn't look like herself. Literally unrecognizable. Destroyed her career. Because her nose was the anchor point for her facial harmony. All her other features existed in conversation with it.
But that's a very minor example. It can be a lot more severe. And I'll use myself as an example, because that's how I talked myself out of it. I wanted undereye filler. I have hollows under my eyes - and since I have large eyes and wear high-prescription glasses, they're really noticeable. I've been self-conscious about them since I was a little kid. But the fact is, they're not fixable. Because they're structural. I have deep-set eyes. The depth isn't just below my eyes - my brow ridge is kind of strong too, because my actual eyes are farther back. It's not a lack of volume, it's just physically where the bones of my face are.
So, yeah, I could get undereye filler. And then my face would look extremely weird. Because my eyes would be deep-set at the top, but not at the bottom, like they're set in there at an angle. Also, because my cheekbones exist in relation to my deep-set eyes, getting underye filler will make my cheekbones look flat. So unless I want to completely lose my cheekbone structure, I'd need to get filler in my cheeks, too - to balance it out.
But my cheekbones exist in relation to the rest of my face. At that point, the features of my upper face would be a lot stronger and more prominent than the features of my lower face. That's gonna throw off the balance. I'll probably need lip filler, so my lips don't seem to disappear visually. But now my lips are out of balance with my jaw and chin - I'll need jawline and chin filler.
Meanwhile, my soft, small nose is progressively disappearing into these stronger, sharper features. Oh shit, now we're doing actual surgery. But most rhino procedures will make the nose look even smaller. Okay, keep it minimal with a tip-plasty and maybe some filler in the nose bridge to create a stronger, sharper look without losing too much actual size.
But now the ratio of my nose to my lips is off and it's making my philtrum look long. I guess I'll get a lip flip? But since my smile isn't gummy, I'll probably need an actual lip lift, which is another surgical procedure. And shit, now my teeth look weird, because I have small teeth. The lift increased tooth show, but there's no more tooth to show. Now I need veneers.
By the end of this, I would have spent tens of thousands of dollars on cosmetic procedures. I would not look anything like myself. I would have filler in every single feature on my face and have almost certainly started getting that overfilled pillowface look. And by the way, all that filler would probably gett in the way of the natural movement of my face, so my facial expressions would probably look super weird. (example - Bobbi Althoff) And I probably still wouldn't like the way I look. All because I wanted a little filler in the hollows under my eyes.
I didn't realize this until I found a series of pictures of someone who went through it. A very pretty young woman. Every procedure making her look slightly worse, but in a different way, as she tried to fix the problems caused by the last procedure. Until she eventually looked like a plastic alien freak tbh.
A final, gentler point: You are one link on a genetic chain.
This may not apply to your friend. She may not have any genetically-related children in her life, and may not ever have them. But if she wants children some day, or she has nieces and nephews... they're not gona inherit her altered features. They're gonna inherit the features that she felt were so unattractive they warranted painful, expensive, invasive alteration. What does that say to them?
Or maybe it's not about the children who share her features. Maybe it's about her mother, or grandmother, or aunt, or sister, or cousin. Most likely, there is someone in her family with exactly the same feature that she is trying to change.
I also have to regularly talk myself out of a very small amount of lip filler, right in the middle of the bottom lip. Frankly, it would make me look better, objectively speaking. My sisters have the same lips I do. By saying my lips are unacceptably unattractive, I'm saying their lips are unacceptably unattractive. And I would never, ever say that to them.
If your friend has absolutely zero relationship with any of her genetic relations and also never wants kids, maybe this won't apply. But if she does... this might hit harder than an abstract discussion of feminist principles.
1. Filler is not temporary, it just migrates - and you have no way of knowing or controlling when, or how that happens. Trying to dissolve it could have disastrous consquences.
2. The long-term effects of filler are pretty unknown.
3. It probably won't look good anyway.
4. You are not the only person in the world with features that look like yours.
