As Duck Would Have It

My boyfriend just said, "Your lips get bigger and smaller. What's going on?" I admitted that I've been getting them injected. He hinted that I should stop, saying, "You're too hot. You don't need it." Do I really need to kick the habit?

--Smoochy

If your boyfriend wanted to kiss something inflated, he'd make out with his tires. There's a reason you feel compelled to join the reality-star-led parade of women duckbilling it up -- as opposed to going in for a nostril enlargement. Men evolved to prefer women with plump lips. As for why, it turns out that the features men across cultures find beautiful are those that give them the best shot of passing on their genes. Biopsychologist Victor S. Johnston, who studies the biological basis of human facial attractiveness, finds that full lips on a woman (along with small jaws and a small chin) are associated with low androgens (male hormones) and elevated levels of the female hormone estrogen -- a combination that translates to higher fertility. In other words, big pillowy lips are basically a message from nature's ad agency: "Wanna have descendants? Pick me -- not some thin-lipped Lizzie." However, there are full lips and lips full of stuff some plastic surgeon injected in them, and any plastic surgery that can be spotted as such is usually a turnoff to men. (You might as well get a tattoo that says, "Hi, I'm insecure!") So, tempting as it is to keep up with the Kardashians, you'll be more attractive to your boyfriend if you don't seem to need to. Best of all, to accomplish this, all you have to do is avoid spending hundreds of dollars to look like you just got out of a heavy make-out session with the vacuum cleaner.