adminGirls as young as 12 are getting cosmetic surgery such as butt lifts and nose jobs under the watchful eye of their mothers in a desperate and extreme bid to become beauty queens in Venezuela.
In a country obsessed with winning international contests like Miss World and Miss Universe fame-hungry teens are going to shocking lengths to conform to the beauty pageant ideal.
They include extreme measures to lose weight, with girls as young as 16 undergoing drastic surgery to cut out part of their intestines so food passes through their body without being digested.
Other methods to make themselves thin include sewing plastic mesh on girls’ tongues to prevent them from eating solids, and having plaster casts fitted which shrink their waists.
Meanwhile, parents desperate to see their daughters crowned queens are injecting them with hormones, aged just eight or nine, to halt the onset of puberty and cause them to grow taller, our investigation found.
Disturbingly, most of the procedures are openly encouraged by the country’s “beauty academies”, finishing schools for beauty queens attended by thousands of Venezuelan girls as young as four.
And many parents, who see their daughter’s success as a route out of poverty, do whatever it takes – even getting into crippling debt – to finance places in the academies and pay for expensive surgical procedures.
But the craven pursuit of physical perfection – or rather the Barbie-doll look of Miss World winners – often ends in bitter disappointment for the starstruck youngsters, and sometimes tragedy.
Dozens of teenage girls die every year during cosmetic surgery in the country. A recent campaign aimed to educate Venezuelan girls about the dangers of liquid silicone butt injections before the age of 12 to “get to them early, as parents tend to offer these injections as 15th birthday presents”.
The campaign in middle schools by an organisation called NO to Biopolymers, YES to Life foundation was set up by Mary Perdomo, who later died of the result of buttock injections she had had four years earlier.
Maria Trinidad, from the group, said: “Every girl here dreams of being a ‘Miss’. We Venezuelans see those people as the perfect women. When you live in a country where a beautiful woman has greater career prospects than someone with a strong work ethic and first-class education, you’re forced into the mindset that there’s nothing more important than beauty.”
The fact that Venezuela has produced more winners of international beauty pageants than any other nation is a source of national pride.
Their tally so far includes six Miss World, seven Miss Universe, six Miss International and two Miss Earth crowns – more titles that any other country. — Daily Mail
Online Reporter