14 DAY TRIAL // Taking selfies to post on your social media accounts might seem like a silly, pointless thing to do but, to millions, it’s what their entire day is all about. As Triana Lavey, a talent manager at a public relations firm in Los Angeles, says, a good selfie is like a headshot that allows you to reinvent yourself with each new day.
Lavey believes this with so much passion that she got $15,000 (€10,831) worth of plastic surgery just so she could get the perfect selfie face: a face that looked Photoshopped in real life, the face she always wanted but never had.
Her case was documented on ABC’s Nightline as part of a growing trend that has men and women all across the world going under the knife just so they can post “perfect” pictures of themselves online.
“To me, plastic surgery should be a last-ditch effort. After you have worked out, after you've good discipline in your diet and exercise then you go to surgery,” Lavey says right before going into surgery to get her new, “improved” face.
As part of her makeover, Lavey got a chin implant and a nose job, and fat grafts to the face that allowed the doctor to add more definition to her cheeks. She initially went just for the chin implant but was told that she would need a few more things done to get the effect she wanted.
At the end of it all, Lavey says she’s happy with the results but she admits that she will probably have even more work done later in life. For the time being, she gets by with Botox done regularly.
Ironically, she believes that this culture of the selfie and the fact that there are so many apps available that allow you to remove all imperfections until you’re left with just the image of yourself you want others to have access to are putting an extra strain on our self-esteem by making us raise the bar of our expectations regarding good looks.
Somehow, she doesn’t believe what she’s done, having her face altered through surgery just so she could take better selfies, equates or is worse than the availability of apps that allow you to manipulate images.
“I now have the face that I always thought that I had,” she says, happy. “I look like myself, but Photoshopped. Not everyone is born beautiful and if you can get a little help from... a nip-tuck then more power to you.”
Check out her transformation below.