Barbie’s world: the normalisation of cosmetic surgery

If Barbie were a real woman, she wouldn’t be able to walk. Her enormous head would loll forward on her spindly neck, her tiny ankles would buckle under her elongated legs, and she would be forced to move about on all fours.

In the upcoming Barbie film, Margot Robbie nails her character’s toothy smile and blonde bouffant, but even she cannot come close to imitating Barbie’s monstrous proportions. More adventurous imitators have tried. It’s rumoured that the so-called ‘Eastern Bloc Barbie’ – a 37-year-old Moldovan by the name of Valeria Lukyanova, one of several plastic surgery addicts dubbed ‘human Barbies’ – had ribs removed and her eyelids trimmed in her efforts to look as much as possible like the real (or, rather, unreal) thing.

This is an extreme example, but what’s more worrying is the underlying trend. A generation brought up on social media, accustomed to projecting an idealised version of themselves, is buying into a certain ideal of beauty. In an era when editing photos of yourself is widespread, more people are starting to edit their actual selves with plastic surgery. Prices are crashing down: bigger lips from £200, a nose job for £3,500. The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) says that 600 cosmetic procedures a week were performed last year, twice as many as the previous year.

On the high street, adverts offering botox, liposuction and fat transfer are taking their place alongside offers of the perfect smile or year-long suntan. Nose jobs, breast augmentation and tummy tucks are joined by a new range of techniques popularised by influencers on Instagram and reality TV. The ‘Barbie nose’, according to one Turkish clinic targeting British customers, consists of ‘shaping a small, elegant nose with smooth curves and an otherworldly flare, as if coming from a fairytale fantasy or an anime creation’.