Four Years of Genius, Three Syringes of Regret: My Quest to Get the Mona Lisa Look on the NHS of Naughtiness
Photo by Photo by perfect point on Unsplash on Unsplash
There are cheaper ways to look enigmatic. A flat cap and a stare, for instance. A pint of Abbot in a Wetherspoons window seat does it for free. But I am not a sensible man, and when an aesthetic clinic in Hale offered to give me the Mona Lisa look using nothing but botulinum toxin and a steady hand, I said yes before they'd finished the sentence.
For context: Leonardo da Vinci spent roughly four years — possibly more, accounts vary, the man was a notorious procrastinator — perfecting that half-smile. I wanted mine in a 45-minute appointment between a mum-of-two getting her lips done and a bloke called Gaz having his forehead ironed flat for his sister's wedding. Art has never been so time-pressured.
The Consultation, or 'Sir, Why?'
The first practitioner, a lovely GP-turned-aesthetics doctor in Manchester's Northern Quarter, looked at the reference image I'd brought (a postcard from the Louvre gift shop, £3.50, the most I'd spent on the project so far) and asked a question I would hear eleven times over three clinics:
"But the expression isn't in the muscle. It's in the lighting. And the ambiguity."
"Can you inject ambiguity?" I asked.
She paused for a long time. Long enough that I thought she might genuinely attempt it.
"I can inject adjacent to ambiguity," she said, which is now the title of my memoir.
The problem, as several practitioners explained to me with increasing desperation, is that the Mona Lisa smirk isn't a muscular expression at all. It's what art historians call sfumato — a smoky blending of edges, so you can't quite tell if she's smiling. Botox, by contrast, is the opposite of sfumato. Botox is a bulldozer. You cannot smoke-blend a face that has been functionally wallpapered.
Clinic One: The Slight Wince
The Manchester attempt cost me £195 and resulted in what my colleague described as "the face of a man who's just remembered he left the hob on." Not a smirk. A wince that had been arrested mid-development and told not to move.
The practitioner had frozen my corrugator muscles — the frownies, as the trade calls them — on the theory that removing the ability to frown would push my resting face upward into something smile-adjacent. What it actually did was remove my ability to express the emotion 'mild concern about a bus timetable', which, in Britain, is a disability.
I spent a fortnight unable to look sceptical. Do you know how much of British life is conducted through sceptical eyebrow? The entire nation's discourse — Question Time, the football, literally any conversation with a builder about a quote — relies on it. I had to nod instead, like an American.
Clinic Two: The London Overcorrection
My Harley Street appointment was £340 and came with a consultation that lasted longer than my last relationship. This practitioner — charming, thorough, genuinely excellent at her job — took one look at my face and refused to do the full brief.
"I can give you a subtle lip lift," she offered. "I cannot give you her. Nobody can give you her. She's been dead for five hundred years and even she probably didn't look like that in real life."
She gave me the lip lift. The result, photographed in a Nando's for scientific consistency, was a face that suggested I'd been told a mildly funny joke in a language I didn't speak. Three people asked if I was alright. One asked if I'd had "something done", which in London is both an accusation and a compliment.
Clinic Three: Glasgow, and Glory of a Sorts
The final attempt, in a clinic above a nail bar in Glasgow's West End, was the most successful and the most alarming. The practitioner — who asked to be credited only as "Nurse Moan-a, which is coincidental and I'll thank you no' to make it a thing" — took a genuinely artistic approach.
She micro-dosed tiny amounts around my mouth corners, theoretically creating a resting expression of imminent amusement. And for about nine days, it worked. I had it. The smirk. The look of a person who knows something about the human condition and finds it quite funny, thanks.
Then it settled, and I spent the following three weeks looking like I was about to ask for a refund. Which, given I'd spent a combined £640 on the project, was arguably accurate.
The Value Debate: Was Leonardo Ripping Us Off?
Here's the arithmetic that haunted me on the train home. Leonardo: four years, infinite genius, one of the most celebrated artworks in human history. Me: £640, three needles, twenty minutes of Glasgow drizzle, and a face that my nan said made me look like I'd "sat on something".
On a per-year basis, though, the maths flips. The Louvre's version has appreciated for five centuries. Mine will wear off by Christmas. But Leonardo never had to do a school run, attend a Zoom meeting, or try to drink a flat white through a partially numbed upper lip. Different eras, different pressures. I shan't judge him.
The Rankings, Because You Deserve Them
- Glasgow micro-dose smirk — 7/10. Genuinely smirky for nine days. Docked points for the refund-face aftermath.
- Harley Street lip lift — 6/10. Sophisticated. Confusing to Nando's staff.
- Manchester wince — 3/10. Removed my ability to be British. Unforgivable.
Would I do it again? My face says no. My face says several things, actually, none of them clearly, which — if you think about it — is the most Mona Lisa outcome of all. Leonardo, you absolute fraud. You beautiful, four-year-having fraud. I understand now.
The writer's expression returned to normal in approximately six weeks. His sceptical eyebrow made a full recovery and is currently deployed against an energy bill.
