Mommy, Mommy, I Want to Be That Dolly!

There’s a new trend hitting the web that, I’ve got to say, feels really … disturbing. It’s this whole thing with young girls transforming themselves into living dolls or anime cartoons. I know, I know, this isn’t really anything new. We’ve had Lady Gaga and women striving to achieve Barbie-like perfection through plastic surgery for some time now. But this latest strain seems to be as strange as it is popular. And trust me, this isn’t just some experimental craziness for Halloween: There are people who spend hours every day transforming themselves into some Comic-Con fanboy’s dream girl.

The 19-year-old girl pictured to the right, for instance, is Anastasiya Shpagina, a Ukrainian girl who has hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube and Facebook. Looking like someone right out of the anime world that inspires her, the 5-foot-2 woman reshapes herself with enormous eyes, flawless skin, a teeny-tiny waist, a coquettish pose, a defined butterfly-lipped pout and very brightly colored hairstyle. She’s even taken on the moniker of Fukkacumi, a name straight out of a Japanese comic. Click here to see Anastasiya demonstrate how she makes up her eyes—a painstaking process complete with oversized contact lenses and huge eyelashes that can take somewhere north of 30 minutes per eye to accomplish. Britain’s Daily Mail reported that the young girl is even considering constructive surgery on her eyes.

Anastasiya is far from the only girl grabbing global plastic-girl attention. American Dakota Rose—dubbed Kota Koti—has been hitting Internet sites as the “real-life Barbie,” thanks to her doe-eyed stare and dainty proportions. And an Asian girl named Venus Angelic did her own online tutorial for becoming a “BGD,” or Ball Jointed Doll. The YouTube vid has garnered more than  4.7 million views.

These kids gather fan bases, dole out “how-to” videos, hit the talk-show circuit, you name it. And you’ve got to admit, when seeing pics of some of these girls, the doll-like effects are remarkable.

On the other hand (and sorry for being so behind the cosplay times), but I can’t help wonder if this kind of obsession sends a whole lot of really negative messages. If we worry about girls struggling with a lousy body image because they’re looking at airbrushed pictures in a glamour mag, what does this do?