A singer who spent £20,000 to change his looks has shared an important message. Liam Halewood, who has been singing since he was 18 and has performed on Canal Street and social clubs across Manchester, specialises as a Boy George tribute.
Liam, from Liverpool, began getting Botox, lip fillers, jaw alignment and hair transplants to land himself a spot on countless reality shows from E4's Bodyfixers and The Extreme Diet Hotel and the X Factor. But he is now speaking out about the dangers of attempting tp achieve "social media perfection."
Sharing a powerful message on his Facebook page with a carefree childhood photo Liam, 36, explained: "My main aim this is year is too stop young kids, boys and girls and teenagers, to stop and think before thinking social media perfection is real.
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"I actually can’t believe how social media sadly has taken over children’s and teenagers minds, and I’ll say it first, I’m a massive hypocrite for posting such a message. Because I allowed myself to get tangled up in a web of thinking it was ok to lie and say 'this is what I look like when I got up' and 'look how flawless my skin is through diet' to 'omg this fat dissolving injection works try it."
He continued: "We wonder why today we have such a thing as 'trolls' on social media and the truth is, if there wasn’t social media the only trolls our kids would know are the cute little ones with multicoloured hair on skateboards.
"Whether we like it or not, social media won’t be going away anytime soon, and why should it? In most cases, it is used correctly, for friends and family to share amazing memories, or old school friends to reconnect after many years, to even allow people to share amazing news to the world, and not to forget the advertising platform it has created for businesses, to even promoting performances, events and new TV shows etc.
Liam, who at 28 got into serious debt after undergoing treatments, is now filler-free and stopped having work done at the end of 2018. He believes the "biggest flaw" in social media is "bad influencers" and is calling for a crackdown on filters allowing influencers to alter their image.
"Now I have nothing against filters in general life because if that heightens someones confidence, and will generally help with someone’s mental health that day getting a bit of love on social media then good for them. Difference is they are not selling a product, they are just simply posting a picture.
"Apparently influencing is a full time job these days, and by god it’s a good job too, the amount of money that can be made from one single post, especially if you have over 1m followers, so if it’s a job, why do they get away with false advertising.
"It’s like me booking a Boy George gig and then turning up as Ariana Grande and saying 'well you’ll still get a good show, I’ve got make up on, I can sing and move what more do you want'"
Liam, who auditioned for the X Factor in 2015, added: "Bad influencers, as there can be some good ones too, have really helped in messing with children’s and young adults mental health and something needs to be done, and if Influencing is deemed a 'job' then false advertising should come into play with them too, when it comes to filters, airbrushing and quite frankly falsifying what’s really in the picture they are posting to sell a brand, a product or even a location even"
On Saturday night he spoke of his worries on Talk TV. "I'm worried about Instagram influencers, that's my thing. I can't stand influencers at the moment because there are some very bad influencers out there who say 'I get up looking like this' and they filter their picures and they've had surgery done," he said.
He added: "They get all this surgery and then filter the pictures and sell a dream to kids I feel kike filters should be banned for influencers. If influencing is a job they have a responsibility to not be filtering their pictures."
Asked why he was speaking out now after having surgery himself, he said: "Because I've changed what's inside. It gets scary when it someone aged 18 is saying 'I don't feel I fit in. I don't feel influencers are promoting positivity and saying 'please look on the inside before you have this done.'"
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