On Friday morning, Alia Bhatt put up an Instagram story lashing out at a random video of hers doing the rounds claiming she has had “botox done wrong”. The actor called the claims “garbage” and said that they are “damaging and exhausting”. Dr Sai Ganapathy, a facial aesthetics expert, is one of those people who made a video talking about Alia’s alleged surgery and its side effects.
In his video, Sai has talked about her “crooked smile” because of the right side of her face getting “paralysed” as a result of the migration of the botox. As we reach out to him to speak about Alia’s claims, he says, “It’s her personal opinion, I wouldn’t like to comment on that. I’d rather talk medically.” Defending his opinion in the video, the expert says, “It’s just a personal judgement and I have not targeted anyone. It can happen to anybody, even some of my patients can face it. These kinds of complications do occur with aesthetic procedures and it’s nothing to worry about. It’s completely reversible.”
Explaining the medical reason behind it, Sai says, “After seeing her videos, I realised that when she must have got the botox done, something might have gone wrong. And it’s not a major but a minute complication, which can occur with any injector. Sometimes the botox migrate towards the risorius muscle if you put up any kind of movement. Thus, sometimes there is a dip movement when she speaks, the lips will be tilted as seen in the video, which I also saw in many videos that people had put up. So, that was the concern.”
Ask him if public figures like Alia should be scrutinised for their looks with claims of surgeries, and he states, “I don’t think it is right, but they are public figures, so there’s more awareness in people when they see these celebrities getting botox done and something goes wrong. It helps people be more aware that these things can be reversed. If these small mistakes can happen with celebrities, they can happen with normal people also. But it can be reversed. So, it’s not about targetting that celebrity but because they are so famous, they can influence the younger generation much more nicely.”
He further adds, “I have spoken about how it’s encouraging that public figures are speaking openly about lip fillers, etc. Rajkummar Rao has spoken about getting chin fillers. Earlier, the younger generation was not aware about skin procedures, but with public figures now coming out with it, there are both positive and negative sides to it. It’s nice that celebrities are coming out openly about getting procedures done. The younger generation are now much more aware as they look up to them. Common people can get influenced, go out and get things done and improve their skin texture and appearance. So, my video was done in a positive aspect, and to create awareness about it.”