14 DAY TRIAL // Without deliberately trying to sound antiquated, I remember a time when you actually had to have a talent or a particular set of skills in order to be famous and, thus, call yourself an artist or a celebrity. Reality television and the Internet have changed that because, today, everyone can be famous for 15 minutes or more if they’re lucky and know which buttons to press.
We live in a world that teaches us that fame is accessible to all and, moreover, that we should somehow strive to achieve it. Fame is no longer a by-product of doing something notable (like, say, in film, music or television) but a goal in itself.
In turn, this means that people with no talent or any other prospect of achieving fame but, at the same time, desperate to have people talking about them, are willing to do everything to get their 15 minutes in the spotlight. That includes drastic body alterations, mostly through plastic surgery and other non-surgical interventions.
The plastic surgery freaks are now the new celebrities and they’re completely shameless about it.
Looking back at some of my recent coverage of such topics, several names come to mind: Human Barbie Valeria Lukyanova, Human Barbie 2.0 Alina Kovaleskaya, Human Barbie failed-wannabe Heidi Montag, Human Ken doll Justin Jedlica, glamor girl Lacey Wild, who is a triple L cup and would go bigger even if it killed her, glamor girl Orit Fox, who says she wants to be “young forever,” an Australian woman who is trying to be the real-life Jessica Rabbit, and newcomer Celso Santebanes, who is an aspiring Ken doll himself.
However, this “trend” is older than you might think: rocker Pete Burns has been getting this kind of media attention for his drastic surgeries for years, just like Cat Woman Jocelyn Wildenstein before him. Both are now in such a state that even trying to guess how they once looked, before the countless interventions that ravaged their face, feels hopeless, futile.
The difference between the older “generation” of plastic surgery freaks and the new one is that the latter is doing it mostly for fame, not really because they felt pressured into it, had bad results and have been trying to “fix it” ever since.
Justin Jedlica, for instance, says that he’s making “art” through his body and that, by constantly reinventing himself, he’s trying to challenge the idea that beauty is what you’re born with. No man or woman should ever settle for that, accept their body as a given, not when we have so many ways of improving on it, he told Oprah just recently.
That sounds like a noble mission (almost), but don’t be fooled by his narrative, because it’s changing depending on who he speaks with. Jedlica was also on a new E! series called “Botched,” in which plastic surgery addicts turn to two specialists to fix the results of one or more botched interventions. By simply agreeing to appear on the show, Jedlica implicitly admitted to having a problem, so all that talk about “art” and beauty ideals went down the drain.
The bottom line is that we now have a (still small) group of people willing to ditch everything they stand for, including their personality and every feature on their face and body, for those 15 minutes of fame.
The idea is scary, and not necessarily because I could never do that out of fear I might not recognize the woman staring back at me in the mirror. It’s scary because it’s sending the message that it’s OK to do it, so it’s much inspiring others, just as hungry for attention, to do the same.
When you become famous for releasing really bad music that goes viral (Rebecca Black and her dreaded “Friday” is the best example), if you’re not happy with the results and the feedback, you can just lay low and try again when you consider people have forgotten about it. With plastic surgery, especially as extensive as it is with the cases mentioned, there’s really no going back, you’re stuck with the results for life.
These people are selling their soul, their faces and their bodies to the Devil for a second in the spotlight. They’re also throwing money at him because, let’s be real, plastic surgery isn’t cheap.
If they’re happy with what they get in exchange, more power to them, but not rare are the situations when, 10 or 15 years after the fact, they emerge again to lament their initial decision, filled with remorse, bad memories and absolutely no more money left.
It is then that they admit it was not worth it, when they express regret at thinking only about the money. By that time, it’s too late because they have already set a very dangerous precedent.