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"I've butchered my body to be beautiful"

2009-06-30 16:29 BJT

She's been under the knife 44 times and spent £100,000 in her quest for the perfect body, but Jenny Lee says she regrets having surgery

Growing up, Jenny Lee had cheerleader good looks and a movie-star smile. Boys queued up to ask her out, strangers told her she should be a model. Her classmates even nominated her for the title of Most Beautiful Girl. Not that Jenny believed them. Today, aged 32, she's so unrecognisable from her younger self, close friends ask: "Who's that?" when shown an old photo of her.

And the confusion's not down to a bit of weight gain or a new hairstyle. Over the past 12 years, Jenny, from Austin, Texas, has had 44 cosmetic surgery procedures to transform her into the blonde Barbie-doll lookalike she is today. These include four nose jobs, three boob jobs, cheek and lip implants and a full body lift.

She's spent almost £100,000 - and she's not done yet. But ask her why she's so desperate to completely transform herself, and Jenny is at a bit of a loss. The most likely answer lies in the body dysmorphic disorder diagnosis she was given six years ago - a psychological condition in which a person becomes obsessed with imaginary defects in their appearance.

But while admitting she has low self-esteem, Jenny doesn't believe she has BDD. She insists she was just on a quest for the "perfect body" and became addicted to surgery along the way.