London, UK - Jess Flaherty, a senior news reporter for the Daily Mirror, has penned an opinion piece in which she describes the decision to tattoo her lips ahead of her wedding this summer.
In her lengthy piece, Flaherty revealed that she will be getting married to her fiancé this summer, on what will be their 15th anniversary. While nearly everything is ready to go, there's one thing that's been bothering her.
Flaherty describes her lips as having always been "extremely pale," with "not much difference between my ghostly complexion and the color of my lips." This is something that's been an "insecurity" for a while.
To make matters even worse, she also saw her lips as asymmetrical, with one side "plumper and poutier" than the other.
While searching for a solution to the unusual dilemma, Flaherty came across something called "lip blush," a semi-permanent tattoo for the lips which is designed to both correct their color and their shape.
Having discovered the procedure, she booked in with a practitioner named Kathryn and headed off to her appointment. The process only took two and a half hours.
"When she finished and was ready to show me my new lips, I was nervous all over again and convinced I'd hate them," Flaherty wrote. "But I didn't – I loved them!"
"The color is very bright when first finished, but it fades to a more natural, realistic color after around two weeks," she said. "They're more symmetrical, they're a naturalistic color."
Flaherty isn't the only person to have tattooed their lips in an attempt to alter their look. Last year, a Manchester woman went viral after she got similar work done and it went terribly wrong.