Before going on Love Island, AJ Bunker spent a thousand pounds on cheek filler.
AJ has said she was feeling self-conscious about a line on her face and wanted to look younger. A month before going in the villa, she decided to get filler put in.
But she told The Sun’s Fabulous Magazine that she ended up going back three times for more before she made it onto Love Island as a bombshell.
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AJ explained, “When I found out I was going into the villa, I panicked. I decided to get cheek filler last minute and once I had it done, I just kept going back.
"I thought ‘I need more, I need more.' I was so infatuated in getting rid of this one line, I didn’t realise how much it changed my face shape.
"It was only when I watched myself back on TV, I realised ‘oh my God that doesn’t even look like me.'"
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AJ explained that going into Love Island, she felt a lot of pressure to do with her appearance – but it all came from comparing herself to others.
“It wasn’t the casting crew [pressuring me], more from looking at past contestants and popular girls on Instagram.
“I was chasing this generic idea of perfection, rather than learning to love myself and my flaws. You think ‘I’m going to be on TV, I have to look a certain way, this is how girls on TV look.'”
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AJ feels she looked completely different going into the villa to how she looked at her auditions. She applied for the 2020 series, which was later cancelled, but said she had no filler at the time.
Looking back at how she changed, she thinks “the producers probably thought ‘what happened to her face?’
“I looked like a hamster, my cheeks were so chubby.”
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It’s led AJ to wishing that someone would have stopped her or asked her to reconsider if she really needed it.
“Someone should have said ‘no, you’ve had enough’, but they just kept taking my money.
“In [the] process, I didn’t realise it was making my face look worse.”
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Fair play to AJ for being so honest.