How Far Will You Go For The Perfect Profile Picture?

If you were to look at pictures of Valeria Lukyanova taken eight years ago, you would be faced with a beautiful, natural-looking girl – blonde hair, blue eyes, natural-looking figure. Jump to 2012, and you will see a total transformation, an abnormally small waist with extraordinarily large boobs for such a small frame, extremely long blonde hair, and large blue eyes positioned on an unnaturally angular face – this is the real-life Barbie girl, or so she has been coined. She has been through extensive cosmetic surgery to attain this look.

Although she has denied ever going under the knife to create this Barbie doll look, plastic surgeons say that it’s impossible that her body would naturally take on that shape. They say she would have to have ribs removed to have an 18” waist, breast enhancement, her hips widened and surgery to alter the shape of her face… and of course, she needed that perfect platinum blonde hair.

The Social Media Revolution

How did this real-life Barbie Doll become a huge internet sensation? Well through Facebook, of course, her profile pictures to be exact. We all know social media plays a massive part in our lives; whether we like it or not, we can’t escape it; every time we browse the internet, it’s there. For most of us, Facebook is a way to keep in touch with old school friends, family members who are traveling or living overseas, organizing parties and nights out with our mates, and updating our statuses now and again to let our friends know what we are up to.

However, there are a growing number of Facebook users who are obsessed with their online status and how their pictures are performing on the World Wide Web. For some people, their day revolves around how they can create the perfect profile picture in which they look the best they possibly can! You ask them what is most important to them, and they will reply, ‘Getting the most likes on my Facebook pictures.’ The mind boggles, but people are actually going to extreme lengths to create the perfect profile picture, and if those extremes mean going under the knife – then under they go!

Plastic surgeons are seeing a rise in people wanting facelifts and nose jobs because they are repulsed with the way they look in pictures on social media sites and on Skype. Some surgeons have even gone as far as creating specific procedures to accommodate patients who are unhappy with close up shots of themselves.

Sonia Bambdas from the USA is one of these people; she regularly visits her cosmetic surgeon to undergo various cosmetic procedures. Bambdas works from home so she can arrange her working hours, leaving plenty of time to work on her Facebook profile and ensure she looks great.

We are all guilty of deleting that awful picture from our camera or un-tagging ourselves from a truly cringe-worthy image your friend has so kindly uploaded to Facebook. But some people go as far as scouring their profiles and those of their friends to ensure the only pictures visible are ones where they are looking their best.

We all want to look good, but to undergo cosmetic surgery to look good on a picture is, I hope most people would agree, going a tad too far. Something that people need to remember is Facebook is online, yes it is real, but go outside! Have the plastic surgery if that makes you feel more comfortable about yourself, but go out and show off to your friends in a real-life situation. A picture is a still shot of yourself, it gives nothing away about your personality, what kind of person you are, what your favorite color is.

Sometimes people need to take a step back and realize that their lives are revolving around their online personas; they need to learn to detach themselves from their online profiles and focus on the real person and the real world around them. If people want to improve their looks through cosmetic surgery, then they need to seek professional advice before making a decision and ensure they are doing it for the right reason – and that reason shouldn’t be ‘so I can have the perfect profile picture.’