Everything You Need To Know About Selfie Surgery

Bombarded by peer pressure and impossible beauty standards, Indian children as young as 15 are turning to cosmetic surgery

- Lachmi Deb Roy

Barbie wrapped in a Manchester United footie scarf—pinned, scarred and misshapen, like a memento left behind by a vengeful sorceress going at a voodoo doll—is your Exhibit A. It shares space with things you would deem to be part of the normal, reassuring ecosystem atop an urban teenage girl’s chest of drawers: a Harry Potter collection, a high-end Bose Bluetooth speaker set and bobble heads of Beyonce and Kim Kardashian. What gives? What brought this turn to the macabre in this regulation picture of girlish innocence, with its coy aspirations to ideals of beauty?

Well, the grotesque doll is a reminder of the months of depression this girl went through early this year—pockmarked by bouts of hysterical rage that she vented on the toy. Why? Because she was trolled and body­ shamed for her small breasts. She was asked if she was from ‘Man­chester’—a cryptic taunt that swiftly opened the sluice­gates for a torrent of plain in ­the ­face filth. She pulled away from her Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds, and from people, too. She seldom stepped out of her parents’ cushy duplex in a tony south Delhi neighbourhood. Her home became her self ­imposed penitentiary, her asylum.

And she was just 15.

The next turn in the script was as predictable as it was filled with intimations of danger and tragedy. Worried sick about her not­so­ample bosom, she found herself in a doctor’s office discussing surgery. It was a risky move, but she reclaimed her place in the spotlight. She is a C­cup now; her selfies are all wow, topped with bug­eyed emojis, and how she loves the sideways glances of lookyloos on the street. She has got her pound of flesh—er…silicon.