How To Surgically Look Like Barbie

In the latest issue of O Magazine, model Katie Halchishick becomes the human diagram. Posing for photographer Matthew Rolston, her glamorous, Marilyn Monroe-type features are surgically outlined according to Barbie's proportions.

Here’s a breakdown of what she'd need done to be the kind of doll women aspire to: a brow lift, a jaw line shave, rhinoplasty, a cheek and neck reduction, a chin implant, scooped-out shoulders, a breast lift, liposuction on her arms, and tummy tuck, which would also have to be sculpted as if it were lined in whale-bone from the inside. And that’s just the half of her.

Halchishick doesn’t actually need or want any of these procedures. She’s proving a point: just because our distorted image of how a body should be is medically attainable, that doesn’t mean it should be attained.

I had a Barbie doll growing up, but I played with it only once or twice. She bothered me. Dressing her took too long, her shoes never stayed on and her hair felt rough and threadlike. I wonder if finding her undesirable was some kind of foreshadowing for things to come in my life. And don't get me started about Ken...