What on Earth has happened to Jennifer Lawrence‘s face?

Celeb-watchers demanded answers on Twitter last week after J-Law was papped at the latest Christian Dior womenswear show sporting a startling new look.

With what appeared to be freshly filled lips, a fuller jaw, pillowy cheeks – and a forehead as smooth as a couture velvet gown, Lawrence’s fans were struggling to work out if it was even her in the pictures.

Now, I’m all for women doing as they please. But there’s a certain sadness that hits when I see yet another starlet rendered unrecognizable – transformed from beauty to botched.

Of course, surgery and Hollywood are hardly a new love match.

But it strikes me that the shamelessly plastic-fantastic look of our ageing grande dames – the Chers, the Madonnas, the Donatella Versaces – is suddenly being adopted by ever younger celebs.

As a woman in my mid-twenties, I get it.

We’re now taught to dread the Big 3-0 as the hard-and-fast cut off from medically un-aided youth. That our thirties will be a minefield of smile lines and saggy bits, and that once 29 ticks to a close, it’s time to hit up the surgeon’s office.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked casually if I’d considered getting ‘baby botox‘ – whereby you inject relatively small amounts, despite not needing it, to stave off the ageing onset.

The honest answer is that I have thought about it – lots.

That women now routinely ask each other such things – at such startling young ages (I’m 25) – says so much.

Blame Instagram. Blame the Kardashians. But really, it’s no surprise if, at 33, Lawrence has indeed succumbed to these pressures.

Being in the public eye, photographed constantly and ruthlessly shamed if caught on a bad day, celebrities – especially women celebrities – don’t stand a chance.

Lawrence hasn’t ever spoken on whether she’s had cosmetic enhancements – but she has talked about her tough experiences as an actress, including pressure to strip off and lose weight.

In 2017, she told a publication: ‘A female producer had me do a nude lineup with about five women who were much, much, thinner than me. We stood side by side with only tape covering our privates… the producer told me I should use the naked photos of myself as inspiration for my diet.’

Could it be industry pressure that has led to her latest look? She wouldn’t be the only one.

Ariana Grande, who turned 30 just a few months ago, recently admitted to having ‘a ton’ of work done in her mid-twenties.

Speaking to Vogue the singer said: ‘I had a ton of lip filler over the years, and Botox. I stopped in 2018. I want to see my well-earned cry lines… Aging can be such a beautiful thing.’

Admissions like Grande’s are rare. Usually, we can only speculate whether famous faces have had a bit of help, even when it’s risibly obvious. (Looking at you, Kylie Jenner).

Most would have us believe they went to sleep one day flat-chested and wrinkled, only to wake up the next with Double D’s and porcelain skin. (Don’t worry Kim K, we all believe that your ass doubled in size from a few squats!)

Even Lady Gaga, now 38 and known for her alternative looks and general ‘IDGAF’ attitude, seems to have gone the way of the needle.

In recent years, the songstress has quite literally gained herself an immovable Poker Face.

In 2013, Gaga told Howard Stern: ‘I’ve never had any work-work done, but I went through a phase when I was smoking pot when I was really obsessed with getting facial injections.’

Perhaps that phase never ended.

Selena Gomez was mocked on social media recently because of her teeth.

The star appears to have opted for a new set of pearly white veneers that are a tad too large for her mouth. Even the liberal-loving Washington Post published a piece about them, commenting that ‘now everybody has the same smile… and it’s kind of creepy.’

Like Lawrence, the best thing that Gomez could have done is nothing. Tampering with such enviable, natural good looks is only bound to spark disaster.

But as I say, I totally get it.

As soon as I was legally able to, on my eighteenth birthday, I hopped on a bus to a local clinic to fill my lips. What was wrong with my mouth? Absolutely nothing.

But where I grew up, in South Wales, gargantuan lips hanging off your face had become the new ‘in thing’, and teens like me were scrambling to keep up.

At $200 a pop it was hardly affordable on a waitress’s wages.

Especially when – and here’s something nobody ever seems tells you – I had to return every six months to keep my pout pumped up.

If you don’t, the filler can degrade unevenly, migrating out beyond your lips in unsightly clumps.

I became so obsessed with the effect wearing off I often exceeded the recommended two annual visits. There was a period when I was getting the same amount of lip filler per month that many people would get in a year.

Yet no practitioner warned me that this was dangerous or that it would change my face in a way that I could never undo. They just carried on pocketing my cash.

A few years later, I decided things were getting ridiculous and quit fillers for good. My lips were full of lumps like a deformed Daffy Duck.

It’s now been nearly three years and I can still feel lumps spread out around my face. Even if I opt for a painful dissolution procedure, I doubt my lips will be normal again.

Now, I did also have a ‘mini’ nose job last year, whereby they shaved down the cartilage instead of breaking any bone.

My nose had bothered me for my whole life, and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the procedure – not least because, unlike with injectables, a nose job requires no repeat follow ups.

That’s the thing with so-called ‘tweakments,’ especially when starting so young. From the second you have that bit of ‘baby botox’, that teeny-tiny splash of filler, you’re committing yourself to potential decades, a near life-time of top-ups.

The result: you end up looking like Joan Collins before you’ve outgrown your bike training-wheels.

We’re often told it’s now as simple as getting a blow dry on your lunch break, that these toxic chemicals leave your body naturally after a few months.

That’s simply not true.

26-year-old Kylie Jenner’s marbly, moonish visage should be a warning to us all.

According to a recent survey, a whopping 27 percent of patients who had Botox in 2022 were aged 34 or younger – that’s up 6 per cent on 2015.

The same report said three-quarters of facial plastic surgeons reported a rise in the number of patients under 30 seeking treatments.

But where does it end?

We risk becoming a cardboard-cutout society of freak-show wax works. The Bride of Wildenstein our commander in chief.

I’m now three years clean. My secret? Anytime I think about getting fillers again I pull up Madonna‘s latest Instagram, no doubt flaunting the results of her latest shocking procedure. That’s enough to put anyone off.