A woman in Thailand was left unable to recognize her 22-year-old son after he underwent a drastic plastic surgery makeover in South Korea for a popular television show. Looking at the man’s before and after pictures, who can really blame her?

Noppajit Monlin, a 22-year-old factory worker from Thailand, had always been ashamed of his twisted jaw, blemished complexion and his other facial imperfections. At work, he avoided his colleagues as much as possible, eating his lunch alone, instead of joining them, for fear of being laughed at or having to put up with their stares. So when he got selected for the Thai edition of “Let Me In”, a popular South Korean TV show that focuses on extreme plastic surgery transformations, he knew he had a chance to drastically change his life for the better.

Read More »

Photos of three Chinese women allegedly stuck in a South Korean airport, because their passports no longer match their faces following plastic surgery, have been doing the rounds on Chinese social media.

South Korean plastic surgery clinics are renowned as some of the best in the world, so it’s no surprise that women from other Asian countries, like China and Japan, regularly fly to South Korea to get work done on their faces. The problem is that few of them stop at nose jobs, face lifts and Botox injections. Instead, they completely remodel their faces, making it difficult for airport personnel to identify them from their passport photo.

Read More »

Amirul Rizwan Musa, a 21-year-old entrepreneur from Malaysia, has recently come under fire in his home country for spending tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery that left him looking like a real-life anime character.

Amirul, better known by his online name, Miyyo Rizone, became the target of criticism from many of his countrymen, after photos showing his radical transformation went viral on social media, last weekend. The fact that some media outlets reported that he had undergone numerous cosmetic surgery procedures in order to become a living Ken doll, didn’t help things either, and now he’s asking people to stop condemning and dehumanizing him for his choices.

Read More »

Luis Padron, a 25-year-old fantasy fan and cosplay enthusiast from Argentina, has spent tens of thousands of dollars altering his looks in his desire to become a real-life elf.

Luis says he became obsessed with fantastic beings like elves and angels after being bullied as a child. He used to get picked on because he dyed his hair and had a different dress style than most boys his age, and since he didn’t have many friends growing up, he spent all of his free time reading fantasy books and dressing as his favorite characters. By the end of high-school, his unusual looks and natural quirkiness let to him becoming admired, and that just fueled his desire to be different. Now, he’s trying to make the changes permanent with the help of cosmetic medical procedures.

Read More »

A bizarre beauty craze has been sweeping Thailand for the last 5 years, with women spending thousands of dollars to have their upper lip reshaped as buffalo horns. Known as “krachap lips”, the cosmetic procedure is apparently only popular in Thailand.

Named after the water chestnut or buffalo nut – known as krachap in Thailand – because of its shape, which resembles a buffalo head or a flying bat, the controversial cosmetic procedure has become increasingly popular among young women over the last four or five years. It’s unclear how the trend began, but posts on the plastic surgery internet forum Dungdong reveal that people had been talking about the bow-like upper lip shape as early as 2009, in a desire to copy the look of actress Patcharapa “Aum” Chaichua. But it’s been getting worse in the last couple of years and plastic surgeons are desperate to stop it.

Read More »

Vinny Ohh, a makeup artist and part-time male model from Los Angeles, California, has so far invested over $50,000 into 110 cosmetic procedures in an effort to turn himself into an asexual alien.

People have many reasons for turning to plastic surgery, but becoming an alien is definitely not the most common one. Vinny Ohh claims that he doesn’t identify as either male or female and this ongoing process of transforming into an alien being is meant to mirror how he feels inside. He began his unusual project at age 17, when he got his first lip fillers, followed by two rhinoplasties, several cheeks and brow bone fillers, and many more after that. But the most extreme procedures are yet to come, as Vinny plans to spend $160,000 having his genitalia, nipples and bellybutton removed and his forehead realigned.

Read More »

Bryan Ray, a 31-year-old man from Los Angeles, California, is so obsessed with pop superstar Britney Spears that he has spent $80,000 over the last 14 years to look like her.

Ray says he knew there’s was something special about Britney the first time he saw her. The look, her voice and her choreography were “the perfect package” for him and he knew he wanted to be like her. So at age 17, when the dentist designing his veneers asked him which celebrity smile he wanted to base his on, he answered almost instantly. But that was only the beginning of Ray’s transformation, as over the last 14 years, he has had over 90 cosmetic surgeries to make himself look more like his idol.

“So many people refer to me as ‘Britney’ and for a very long time friends have greeted me with the infamous quote ‘It’s Britney, bitch!’ from her song ‘Gimme More’, which I absolutely love,” Bryan proudly says. “Britney will always be one of my biggest inspirations. I love that she was the biggest star in the world, went through an incredibly hard time and came out on top.”

Read More »

Jack Ma, founder of internet giant Alibaba Group, has one of the most recognized faces in China, but he’s not exactly famous for his good looks. Still, that hasn’t stopped on young entrepreneur from spending a small fortune on plastic surgery just so he could look more like the popular billionaire.

Huang Jian, a young man in Shenzhen, claims that he has so far spent around one million yuan ($145,000) on facial plastic surgery, in an effort to make himself look more like Jack Ma. The procedures were done in South Korea, Asia’s premier destination for extreme plastic surgery. Jian says that he is a big fan of China’s second richest man and is undergoing this extreme makeover in the hopes of one day meeting his idol.

Read More »

A Filipino teen who once paid just 500 pesos ($10.74) for cosmetic procedures on his nose and chin has been regretting his decision ever since, as the intervention left him disfigured.

Ever since he was 16 years old, Ellowe Alviso had been using his good looks as a source of income, by landing various modelling jobs. About three years ago, he decided to increase his chances of being selected for modelling gigs by enhancing his facial features. However, he also wanted to save some money, so instead of going to a certified plastic surgery clinic, he got in touch with Kasheca Magallanes, a transgender nurse who was allegedly well-versed in cosmetic procedures. She agreed to work on his face for just 500 Philippine Pesos, which was apparently too good an offer to pass up. Unfortunately, Ellowe would live to regret his decision. Read More »

James Holt, from Bury, England, has so far spent £21,000 ($27,500) on cosmetic procedures in an effort to copy the most striking features of the Kardashian sisters and achieve a fake look.

22-year-old Holt says he has been planning to alter his body from a very young age, when he became obsessed with looking like the models on Page 3 of English tabloids. At age 17, he booked his first cosmetic procedures at a local salon – a bout of Botox shots to his forehead and some lip injections. He had just one milliliter of liquid injected into his lips, but after that failed to draw the attention of his colleagues when he went to school the next day he decided to go back for more.

“I went to college the next day expecting everyone to be amazed and to comment on my lips, but no one said anything,” he recalls. “I went back the next morning and had another 1.5ml put in, but still no one noticed. By the end of the week I had 6ml and everyone said it looked amazing. I loved my look. It was big and juicy and it was just what I wanted.” His joy didn’t last very long, as small bubbles soon appeared on his swollen upper lip, and when liquid started to leak out of it, James was rushed to a clinic in Bury to fix his damaged lips.

Read More »

A couple from France are so obsessed with dolls that they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to transform themselves into real-life Ken and Barbie. They’ve had over 15 procedures between them so far and plan to keep going until they achieve perfect doll-like appearances. And to complete the effect, they’re legally changing their names to ‘Ken’ and ‘Doll’!

Anastasia Reskoss, 20, and Quentin Dehar, 23, met at a boat party in 2013, and they quickly bonded over their fondness for the plastic lives of dolls. “When I’d laid eyes on Quentin for the first time, I knew that I’d found the love of my life,” Anastasia said. “Quentin walked over to me and said: ‘I’ve found the Barbie to my Ken.’ It was so straightforward. We both knew we had met a partner who was going to enable us to become the Ken and Barbie we had always dreamed of being.”

Read More »

Move over, humans, it seems animals need makeovers too. It’s all the rage in South Korea right now as pet owners are actually paying for cosmetic surgery for their furry companions!

Some of the popular procedures include tail shortening and ear trimming for dogs, to make them ‘cute’ with pointy ears. Fat reduction is another popular surgery, along with stretch marks removal, wrinkle smoothing, double eyelid removal and even botox injections. These procedures start from $60 and ostensibly run into the thousands.  

It’s not entirely surprising, given that South Korea is the plastic surgery capital of the world. This is the place where tourists become unrecognisable to the extent that they need special doctor certificates to return to their native lands after having work done on their faces. So it was only a matter of time before people started thinking of botoxing their pets as well.

Read More »

With one in three Venezuelan women opting for breast enlargement procedures, it actually isn’t surprising that store mannequins in the nation now feature augmented busts as well.

According to a New York Times report, plastic surgery is so common in Venezuela that women freely talk about their operations. Even low income women save up to get operated and become what is now considered normal. Mannequin manufacturers claim that they simply had to catch up with these women, or risk bankruptcy. Many factories were in fact struggling to make ends meet until they decided to redesign their mannequins to reflect the nation’s changing beauty standards.

Mannequin factory owner Eliezer Alvarez did just that a few years back – he created a new kind of mannequin with a “bulging bosom and cantilevered buttocks, a wasp waist and long legs,” and experienced an immediate boost in sales. “The mannequins were natural just like the women were natural, (but now) the transformation has been both of the women and of the mannequin,” said Nereida Corro, Alvarez’s wife and business partner.

Read More »

When artist and musician Genesis P-Orridge met his future wife for the first time, in 1993, she dressed him up in her clothes, makeup, and a wig, transforming him into her lookalike. That, in essence, was his first step towards self-transformation, two decades in the making. To this day, even though his wife Jaye has passed on, Genesis continues their love affair by trying to become her.

Genesis, who was born Neil Megson, was already a controversial musician, artist, and a pioneer of modern body transformation in the ’70s and ’80s, long before he met his wife. His 1976 art collective COUM Transmissions, staged an exhibition called ‘Prostitution’, which featured pornographic photographs, sculptures made of used tampons, and transvestite security guards. He had his genitals pierced in the early ’80s, making it to the front page of many British publications.

But his highly unconventional life got even more bizarre after his first meeting with Jacqueline Breyer, a.k.a Lady Jaye. Genesis fell hard for the tall, blond registered nurse, who shared his passion for body modification.  “She told me she saw me as a mirror image of her, and that we were meant to be two halves of one,” Genesis recalls of that first meeting. Since then the two became inseparable.

Read More »

34-year-old Zhang Yiyi wasn’t happy with simply being called a great writer, he wanted to look the part as well. So he spent his entire life savings of 1.4 million yuan ($225,800) on plastic surgery, in order to resemble his childhood hero and role model – William Shakespeare!

The devoted superfan had a total of 10 operations – including eye reconstruction, eyelid surgery, nose surgery and a face tuck – over the span of several months. He is yet to emulate Shakespeare’s famously bald head, but he has settled for growing his hair longer, just to improve the likeness.

Interestingly, Yiyi is an accomplished writer himself, and actually used his book royalties to pay for the cosmetic procedures. But, like the English playwright, he started off poor; he was born in humble surroundings and grew up in a debt-ridden family due to his father’s failing business. Growing up, Yiyi was able to draw parallels between his own childhood and that of Shakespeare, whose father also was declared bankrupt when the playwright was a young boy.

Read More »