Japanese Model Pays $100K, Undergoes 30 Surgeries To Look Like 'French Doll'...And She's Not Done Yet! (SLIDESHOW)
A model in Japan, allegedly traumatized after enduring a childhood in which she was constantly teased for being "busaiku" (translation: ugly), has gone to unfathomable extremes to ensure she'll never be dubbed unattractive again.
The woman who calls herself Vanilla Chamu has spent $10 million yen ($102,000) to undergo 30 plastic surgeries to achieve her desire to resemble a french doll, she says.
Chamu has achieved almost-celebrity status after appearing on the Japanese variety show "Watashi no Nani ga Ikenai no?" (Translation: "Is There Something Wrong With Me?"). On the show she discussed her lifelong obsession with being sculpted into a walking, talking porcelain doll,.
"There isn't anyone who can look at a french doll and say it's not beautiful," Chamu said on the show.
Soon after the episode aired a YouTube video of the show went viral. Result: instant international recognition leads to quasi-fame (as it's been said, "vanity is the quicksand of reason.").
Among the 30 surgeries that Chamu has gone through, beginning at age 19, are: rhinoplasty, double eyelid surgery, eyelash implants, dimple creation, liposuction and breast implants. And she has no plans to stop going under the knife any time soon, if the rumors are true.
This woman's desire to resemble a child's plaything are not the first of such urges to surface with contemporary society placing such a high premium on beauty.
32-year-old Justin Jedlica of New York City has matched Vanilla Chamu dollar for dollar all the way up to the hundred grand mark in his quest to become a human "Ken" doll.
Jedlica has undergone 90 surgeries in a 10-year span to become the real-life version of Barbie's former boyfriend, according to reports. Among his surgical procedures, Jedlica has had five rhinoplasties, a cranial brow bone shape and augmentation to his cheeks, lips, buttocks and chin.
"I love to metamorphasize myself, and the stranger the surgery the better," Jedlica told ABC News. "Bucking the norm is so much fun."