Last week, the algorithm vomited something into my feed that took my breath away. It was a picture of Lily Rose Depp taken on the set of Robert Eggers’s new horror film, Werwulf. The news outlet described her as having been “de-glammed.” She is wearing a prosthetic cleft lip.
My eldest daughter was born with a cleft lip and palate, and she has one of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen. She’s so beautiful, I have over a thousand pictures of her in my phone. She’s so beautiful, I watch her sleep.
My baby went to Halloween dressed as a unicorn. Blissfully unaware that her beautiful face could be used as inspiration for horror. We went trick-or-treating, and she couldn’t contain her excitement when she saw witches, dragons, and werewolves. Her friends stopped to babble at her while she loaded sweeties into a plastic pumpkin. Next year, the person who will be scared is me.
“Look at her lip!” the comments section said, while Lily-Rose bravely wore my daughter's birth defect as a costume. “I love how she’s not afraid to look ugly in movies.”
Could a cleft lip make Lily Rose Depp ugly? I’m sure that’s not what the prosthetic is for. I’m aware of the Russian and German folklore around clefts and wolves. But folklore is folklore, and medieval prejudice is something I hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with in 2025.
A mother on a facebook group I follow wrote of her horror that she’d encouraged fellow parents to take their pre-operation babies to the ‘Werwulf’ casting call. She hadn’t realised what the story would entail.
I don’t want to feel so sensitive about her facial difference being used as shorthand for ugliness or horror, but I can’t help but feel angry and sad. Every day three babies in the UK are born with a cleft, yet the surgery is so brilliant most people don’t know. Charities like Smile Train and CLAPA work hard to destigmatise what is the most common craniofacial birth defect, and now a whole new generation will associate clefts with horror.
Everyone is born with illness and struggle inside them. For babies born with clefts, they start their hardest battles at the beginning. My daughter’s superpower is that she will grow up knowing she’s tough. She fought to live despite being born unable to suck. She had her lip sewn up when she was five months old and her palate just before her first birthday. She was sent home with Calpol and two terrified parents to relearn how to eat and drink. She struggles with hearing and speaking, yet she speaks three languages. She’s a warrior and a menace and my joy. She’s not a werewolf.
My baby has Disney princess eyes and beautiful golden curls. She loves sparkles and glitter and chocolate and being truly, diabolically naughty. She has been told how lovely she is her whole life. She’s not a fucking werewolf.
When Ben suddenly fell ill with a life-threatening illness, a declaration of love and unity started to feel like a radical act.
Some people have criticised Lily-Rose Depp’s casting in period pieces due to her having an ‘iPhone face.’ It's a beauty standard that valorises symmetry, something that I know no matter what surgeons do, my daughter is unlikely to achieve.
She won’t meet the identikit beauty standard of full lips, big eyes, high cheekbones and button nose. But then again, nor do I. I have never been wedded to the pursuit of beauty. While I no doubt benefit from ‘pretty privilege’ to an extent, I am conventionally attractive, but quirky. Beauty has never been my currency. My face is not symmetrical, nor are the faces of most people I love.
We all know the devil works hard, but beauty capitalism works harder. The most beautiful women in the world are having facelifts in their 30s, and girls are starting ‘tweakments’ in their teens.
If ‘tweakments’ are like Pringles and once you pop, you can’t stop, how can we promote self-acceptance in young girls? How can I convince my baby that she’s enough?
My daughter is hypothetically entitled to unlimited state-funded surgery to ‘correct’ her cleft. Her surgeons promised us that they would endeavour to make her look like someone who wasn’t born with a cleft. But is that possible? And is it necessary? How far from ‘werwulf Lily Rose Depp’ will be far enough to feel beautiful?
I look around as women who have been born with every aesthetic advantage live-stream the results of their surgeries. My Instagram algorithm is clogged up with young women (and they are YOUNG) who are having nose jobs/buccal fat removal/salmon sperm injections or even their hairline lowered. I have never wanted any of those things, but my sex, age and shopping habits seem to make my phone think that I do.
This dystopia plumbed new depths when American actress, Shay Mitchell recently released a skincare range aimed at children. I watch my husband rub scar cream into my baby's lip and think of all the other perfect babies with their sheet masks on, worrying about fixing a problem that is yet to exist.
My job as a mother is to fill both my girls with confidence and self-esteem. We don’t talk about other people’s appearances, and I never speak negatively about mine. I show them I value funniness and kindness. I tell them how much I love their company. I want them to know that all the things that make them, them make them beautiful, including their peculiarities. Including their scars.
I don’t think we were ever supposed to see so many ‘beautiful’ faces. We are saturated with perfect symmetry and comparing ourselves to faces that aren’t real. Take away the phones. Throw Instagram face into the sea. The faces that look best on social media often look the weirdest in real life.
Nessarose’s story reminds us how powerful and needed it is to recognise that Disability isn’t something to hide, mourn, or heroically overcome.
I grew up in the era of size zero. I took a while to grow into my face. I was wildly insecure as a teenager and well into my twenties, and then one day I decided to change my mind. One day I woke up and decided that I must be beautiful. Conventionally or otherwise, everyone is beautiful to someone, and this is an acceptance that should be becoming easier, not harder. The cleft campaigner, Ashley Barbour, writes:
“Those of us born with clefts are friends and lovers, moms and uncles, we are kings and doctors, we are teachers and scientists. We are kind and gentle and loving. And we are deeply flawed, complex characters and our authentic experience deserves screen time too. I’m not saying the villain can’t ever have a cleft, but I’m asking for other, equitable representation too.”
My daughter walks through the world with charisma I could only wish to possess at age three. And for now, we can rest easy knowing that small children don’t see the difference. We can tell her how gorgeous and wonderful she is and hope she holds it as her truth, but we can’t control any cruelty that might come. Now, not only do I not want her to have a phone, I must protect her from the oeuvre of Werwulf director Robert Eggers.
Charities we associate with have reached out for information on the storyline. We all hope that the characters with clefts are brave and kind, that they are heroes, that they are not stigmatised, and that some sensitivity has been considered. Maybe I want them to use it as an opportunity to raise awareness. Maybe I want all of them to be sucked into a black hole, so I don’t have to deal with this bullshit.
Maybe I’m being too sensitive. Maybe the 1 in 700 people born with a cleft will be too. Maybe they will say it's “historically accurate,” but I say it belongs in the past.
A version of this article was originally published on The Pug's Ear. For more from Bella Younger, subscribe to her Substack.
