What Happens When People Stop Wanting to Look Like Kardashians?

From Cosmopolitan

It's no coincidence when strangers tell Jennifer Pamplona, 26, that she looks like Kim Kardashian. Over the past nine years, she claims to have spent more than $500,000 on roughly 30 plastic surgery procedures-including breast augmentation, liposuction, butt injections, the removal of several ribs, and tweaks to her cheeks, chin, and nose-to emulate the reality star's look and lifestyle.

But although Pamplona is pleased with her look, she's sworn off elective plastic surgery for the foreseeable future. Her last major procedure-liposuction, a fat transfer to her butt, and the removal of two ribs in 2015-left the influencer bedridden for two months. “My body couldn’t take it anymore,” she says of her painful recovery. Keeping up with the Kardashians, she's realized, is simply too hard on the body. She now suffers from persistent back pain linked to the weight of her breast implants and eventually will go under the knife again to downsize or remove them entirely for relief.

The ultra-full pouts and extreme hourglass figures popularized by Kardashian culture appear to be falling out of favor-even among the sisters themselves: Over the summer, Kylie removed her lip injections (update: she's now back at it); more recently, fans called out Kim for Photoshopping her butt to look smaller than its signature size.

And while the decision to change one's body is highly nuanced, the masses, like A-listers, are also scaling back on aesthetic alterations: Although in 2017, there were 10 percent more "Brazilian Butt Lifts" (i.e., augmentation that involves removing fat from one part of the body and injecting it into the rear) than the previous year, butt implants were 56 percent less popular in 2017 compared to 2016, according to the 2017 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report compiled by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Meanwhile, in 2017, soft-tissue fillers were just 3 percent more popular than they were in 2016, compared to a 312 percent spike between 2000 and 2017, according to the same report.

"I hear more conservatism than I used to," says Dr. Stephan Baker, M.D., a Miami, Florida-based board-certified plastic surgeon, suggesting that OTT hip, lip, and other facial procedures are waning. "When patients come in for [lip] enhancements-they don’t want to look like they’ve been stung by a bee or like a duck, they want it to be subtle."

At the same time, social networks are also shedding light on worst-case-scenario stories, raising awareness about adverse effects of procedures involving injectables and implants. But in the midst of wavering aesthetics and exposure to survivors' warnings, what happens to women who've already pulled out all the stops?

Left lopsided by a lumpectomy she got while five months pregnant at age 26, Canadian activist Nicole Daruda, 54, whose Healing Breast Implant Facebook group now has more than 51,000 members, got small breast implants at age 41 to "fix" a chest she long had perceived as flawed. "Plastic surgery is so ubiquitous among famous personalities," she says, although she didn't set out to look like Kim or Khloé Kardashian specifically. "I thought it must be safe."

After her procedure, Daruda suffered from kidney and thyroid issues, plus fatigue so intense she left her job and took to bed. But it wasn't until she developed swollen lymph nodes-local symptoms-that her doctor acknowledged a breast-implant complication could be to blame. "Before I was in perfect health," she says of her pre-surgery state. "I lost a decade of my life and health to these so-called safe breast implants."

Emerging research, which Daruda's Facebook group helps circulate, connects silicone breast implants to heightened risk of autoimmune disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, stillbirth, melanoma, and lymphoma. The collection of symptoms are colloquially known as "breast implant illness," which isn't recognized as a formal diagnosis by medical communities.

Theoretically, doctors say the condition makes sense: "Any time you put anything foreign, as in, stuff you weren't born with, inside you, it mounts a giant cell reaction and chronic inflammation to try and get rid of it," says Dr. H. Jae Chun M.D, a Newport Beach, California-based plastic surgeon. He performs eight or nine breast explant surgeries a week on patients who suspect their implants are causing adverse effects.

Daruda took this route, getting her implants removed in January 2013, and saw the bulk of her health issues resolve themselves. "There's an aging process that occurs-some of it reverses and some doesn't," she says. Still, she says, her story and others shared on her Facebook page have led hundreds of women to reconsider getting implants or decide to get theirs out, according to messages she's received and posted to the group. "You realize, 'I've gone too far as a human to alter the way [I] look] using substances that are so unhealthy,'" she says of those who opt to explant. "You learn no body part represents your beauty or femininity or essence."

Catching wind of survivors' stories can also encourage people to accept the assets they were born with and sidestep harm in the first place. Social media, news reports, and plastic surgery shows like Botched have provided a forum for patients to share the haunting side effects that can persist even after plastic surgery recovery pangs subside, Dr. Baker notes.

Former model Anivia Cruz, 36, is proof: After sharing her experience with illegal butt injections on social media and on BET's Killer Curves, a recent documentary that explored real women's experiences with black-market surgeries, she gets daily messages from people who say they've decided against enhancing their backsides. "My DMs literally bring me to tears," Cruz says.

Born with a hormonal deficiency and a figure she describes as particularly straight, the Atlanta, Georgia-based motivational speaker developed body insecurities that inspired her to get butt injections in 2006, even before Keeping Up with the Kardashians first aired.

At first, Cruz says, her new figure enhanced her self-image. "As soon as I stood up to see the results, I started crying like a baby-I couldn't believe that in the body I'd hated so much, I saw something I liked," she says. "The addiction started right then and there-I wanted more and I became obsessed."

It wasn't until February 2008, two years after her first butt injections, that Cruz sensed something was wrong with her backside. By that time, she'd had the area enhanced several more times.

"It felt like someone stabbed me with a long needle," she said of the pain that suddenly brought her to her knees and began to recur with increasing frequency. "I woke up one day [in 2008], and my whole butt was as hard as a rock-I couldn't pinch or lift the skin."

In the years that followed, gravity dragged the injected materials down the length of her legs, leading to lumps and discoloration. "The pain was so severe I couldn't live without prescription painkillers," she says, referring to scar tissue that would swell in warm weather. It would add up to 12 inches to the circumference of her hips and provoke irritation that would itch so badly, she'd break the skin when she scratched.

Then, in 2016, a body scrub Cruz used resulted in wounds on her butt that began to resemble dime-size rug burns and, because they wouldn't heal, progressed to gaping holes she'd have to pack with menstrual pads to prevent infection. During this time, she says, nine doctors refused to treat her.

"They didn't know how to treat the wounds because they had never seen or experienced anything like this," she says of the lesions.

"Removing areas where tissue has been infected, you can cause significant deformities," Dr. Baker says, explaining how foreign substances spread and contribute to scar tissue throughout the area, can be tricky. "You can't get a nice smooth contouring when you have all this internal scar tissue pulling on different parts of the buttocks. I've seen patients who are pretty unhappy and sad, and you can't really fix it."

Ultimately, in the fall of 2016, Cruz underwent eight corrective surgeries-one every several days-to remove injected materials and dead skin. By that point, she says, 50 percent of her butt was "a giant hole." "My family didn't understand how I was living through it."

Now, many who've heard her story call her a hero or an angel, including one who cancelled her next-day injection appointment after seeing Cruz's show.

Finally free of pain, Cruz describes her body as permanently deformed. “I look in the mirror sometimes like, 'Oh my goodness, my body looks terrible,'" Cruz says. “But I'm happy I'm alive.”

The American Academy of Plastic Surgeons doesn't keep tabs on every cosmetic and surgical reversal procedure, but Cruz isn't the only person left unsatisfied by her appearance after seeking a correction.

After Kylie had her lip fillers removed, which is done by injecting a medication that dissolves the materials, Pamplona was inspired by the star to follow suit. "My lips looked fake, and I just wanted to look more natural," she says.

Dr. Baker says this behavior is common. "People try to emulate celebrities," he says, adding that he tries to temper his patients' unrealistic expectations by educating them on what's aesthetically desirable and realistic given their anatomy. "If a celebrity herself overdoes something and looks in the mirror and says, 'Wow, I’ve lost my natural beauty and am not as beautiful as I used to be,' at end of the day it’s visual-you look at yourself and pictures and realize it’s too much."

Pamplona, however, ultimately ended up unhappy. "I got them out and I didn't like it. I said, 'Where are my lips?' When you do surgery, you get used to seeing yourself like this in the mirror every day."

Dr. Baker says the longer you have your fillers or implants, the more likely you are to end up dissatisfied due to aging. "There are things you can recover from overdoing when you're young and the elasticity of the skin is good-like getting lip fillers removed," Dr. Baker says. "But if you stretch out the skin with over-augmentation, as you get older, you get dimples, sagginess, and undesirable outcomes.”

Pamplona can speak to that: "I'm starting to look old," she says, although she's still several years short of 30.

Unfortunately, it's often not until people see celebrities and influencers age out of, change their minds about, or suffer permanent damage from enhancements that they begin to exercise more caution in seeking out cosmetic procedures. "It corrects the pendulum," Dr. Baker says of trends that ping-pong from extremes like augmented bubble butts to 100 percent natural. "People run in the opposite direction."

While Dr. Baker says many of his patients still reference stars they want to look like, anecdotally, others are seeking breast implant, butt injection, and lip filler removals more often, citing side effects or a change of heart.

Of course it's possible that people are just smartening up: "At a certain point," Pamplona she adds, "you don't have to think about your body anymore.

"You have to think about your soul."

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