‘MY BUM COST ME £12K’ The editor who bought her body

(AND SHE’S STILL NOT HAPPY) Could you buy your perfect body if you just kept throwing money at it? No. So why is Ingeborg van Lotringen still trying?

ifeel bad about my thighs. I know that’s the wrong thing to say. In this age of politically correct body-positivity, I should rock my cellulite with womanly pride. Instead, I wear board shorts on the beach – a genius idea, I think (my husband thinks not), because pre-board short, I refused to get up from my towel for fear of appalling strangers with my lumps. I know (as should you) that cellulite is just how women store fat, but still, it pisses me off. So I’m a target for a ‘body-perfecting’ industry worth £500million worldwide* that peddles some of the emptiest promises in beauty. Does anything work? Well, yes – but it’s a qualified yes: ‘transformative’ changes don’t happen. Suffice to say that with 20 years of (free!) access to every leg treatment going, plus 25 years of hardcore exercise, I have a six-pack and Terminator arms. But I still have doughy legs and lumps in my bum (camouflaged by control tights on p90). That’s just how Mother Nature rolls.

So why waste time on the topic? Because the non-surgical body-contouring industry remains a bastion of misinformation, using (biologically impossible) terms like ‘fat-melting’ and ‘cellulite-removing’ with impunity. It’s a small step from embracing Insta feeds displaying heavily edited ‘results’ as ‘inspo’ to thinking you may be just a few light credit-card transfers away from body Nirvana – I get it. But wouldn’t you prefer a realistic assessment of what to expect rather than delude yourself a retouched Kardashi-belfie is physically achievable?

Clearly, some of us don’t: Dr Benji Dhillon of London’s Phi Clinic sees plenty of patients who believe the only thing standing between them and perfection is cash. “So a good clinician ought to be searingly honest: it’s our responsibility to explain that every individual body or skin reacts differently to treatment. You can’t expect a cookie-cutter result,” he says. Or even a guaranteed one. That means taking a punt on procedures that run into the thousands, which is why finding a clinic that offers multiple treatment options and a 100% up-front consultation is key. Or you could rely on the experience of someone who’s tried almost all of it – me. Don’t get your hopes up.