“I don’t understand why people think you have to be committed to the human form”

Aug 5, 2014 15:49 GMT  ·  By
Justin Jedlica says his body is his work of art, plastic surgery is his creative outlet
   Justin Jedlica says his body is his work of art, plastic surgery is his creative outlet

Justin Jedlica has come to understand that beauty ideals should not be set in stone, and through his body (his “body of work,” as he puts it) he’s hoping to achieve that. Jedlica has turned himself into a real-life version of the famous Ken doll from Mattel but, he tells Oprah, it’s not all about vanity.

Jedlica was on Oprah’s most recent episode of Where Are They Now, and as the videos below can confirm, he’s determined to make haters stop hating on him just because he’s had dozens of surgical interventions all over his body. As a side note, you might not be able to see the videos if you’re outside the US.

Jedlica got his first surgery, a nose job, when he was 18 and, he explains, that was his first sign that he was “worth it” because, coming from a poor family, he never really had something to call entirely his own. Now he had a brand new, $3,500 (€2,608) nose to tell him to dream bigger.

He hasn’t stopped going under the knife since then but the difference is that, today, he isn’t paying for the interventions out of his savings because he’s married to a rich businessman who’s willing to foot the bill for all that.

Being the human Ken doll was never something that Jedlica aspired to: the nickname came by accident from a 20/20 report on ABC and it stuck with him. He’s not about to knock it though, because he knows it might give him a career, together with “a new purpose” in life.

That new purpose, Jedlica says, is making art through and with his body.

“If I choose to express my creativity through my plastic surgery, it's no different than someone in fashion who deals with trends,” he says. “Standards of beauty change, ideals of beauty change. I don't understand why people think you have to be committed to the human form and that you shouldn't be able to retain control to change it.”

That said, he also wants to “inspire” people. It’s not that he wants all men in the world to go ahead and get plastic surgery, but he wants them to know they could if they wanted to.

“I'm really interested in... possibly altering people's thoughts on what beauty is or what is beauty supposed to be. It is for personal validation, but in the same way, it's also to push other people to accept and understand and broaden the spectrum of what beauty is,” Jedlica says.

He plans to do that by counseling people before plastic surgery or, if things go well, according to plan, by putting out his own line of silicone implants. He developed them when he became unsatisfied with what he could find on the market and claims to have a more “real” feel to them.

By the way, Jedlica has countless such implants all over his body so he must know what he’s talking about: from the ones in his cheeks to the ones on his arms, chest, abs, and even backside, he’s almost literally wrapped in plastic. He’s also had surgery on his lips, eyes, nose, jaw, hairlines, and everywhere else on his body.

Jedlica laughs in the face of those “experts” who, without treating him or even meeting him in his everyday life, go on record saying he must have dysmorphic disorder or OCD. “I think I have a very clear picture of what I look like. I'm not unhappy with the way that I look,” he says chuckling. 

It’s not a disease if it’s a choice, to put it differently. For Jedlica, plastic surgery is his creative outlet.