14 DAY TRIAL // Justin Jedlica is 34 years old but his age is hard, if not impossible, to guess by just looking at his face, because it’s smooth and unwrinkled, taunt, Botoxed, and plumped up from all the fillers. He could be 14 and we wouldn’t be able to tell. Known better as Ken Doll, Justin is proud to say he’s had 149 cosmetic procedures so far and that he considers his look a “work of art.”
In a new interview with the Daily Beast, Justin also stresses that, just because he happens to be this obsessed with his appearance, particularly with gradually transforming himself through plastic surgery, it doesn’t mean that he’s not a man anymore. He’s a man where it counts, he stresses with a smile – and doesn’t plan to have surgery down there to remove anything.
Having started getting work days after he turned 18 (he says he’d always wanted to get a nose job because his natural nose was just “wrong” on his face), Ken Doll has seen a considerable rise in popularity in recent years, for no other reason than his incredible transformation.
If you look at a list of the interventions he’s had, it’s no wonder he’s keeping people so fascinated: he’s had pec and arm implants, his abs done (also with implants), his backside made perkier through the same procedure, and his face completely reshaped with surgery and injections. Justin is, if anything, a walking and talking advertisement for plastic surgery practices.
However, if you ask him, he’d call it art: a painter uses a canvas to tell a story, but Justin is using his body to express himself creatively, he argues.
“I saw it as an investment for myself, so it is definitely a confidence booster and something that really helps build self-esteem,” he says, explaining how his role models early in life were Michael Jackson and Joan Rivers, both known for the large number of interventions undergone throughout the years.
Justin claims he doesn’t suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder, as some specialists rushed to claim right after his case made international headlines. That would mean that he hated what he saw in the mirror, and he doesn’t.
“My view of myself is very realistic. I think I’m blessed to have the body I have, and [plastic surgery] has just become something that’s fun and cool. It’s a way for me to express myself, and at this point, obviously there’s an additional kickback from the media and I can pay for the surgeries now by selling my stories because people are interested. I like the attention that stems from it. I look how my body looks,” he argues.
“I don’t have a misrepresentation in my head of what I look like. I didn’t do my surgery to blend in; I didn’t do it to look like anyone else or to fit in with anybody else. To the contrary, I did it to look exceptional in my mind. I wanted to have a look that was very unmistakable. And whether or not other people agree with it, it doesn’t matter, because I did my surgeries for me,” he explains.
Right now, Justin works as a plastic surgery counselor, which, he says, he does because he wants to help people. He considers himself a “privatized beauty broker” working for the good of mankind, but for money. He needs to work because he’s still saving up for more surgical work and other cosmetic interventions: so far, he’s spent $170,000 (€123,018) on his out of the ordinary, purposefully plastic look.