More and more young Chinese women are subjecting their faces to plastic surgery in hopes of becoming online stars.
With the possibility of earning up to $20,000 a month, it’s not surprising that China’s live streaming industry continues to flourish. Last year, estimates valued the market at $11 billion, a figure bigger than the country’s film industry.
But with a saturated market comes tough competition between players. There are more than 20 social media platforms in China with six million streamers doing the same thing. As a result, we’ve seen girls take their sexy dancing to unusual locations such as streets, toilets and freezing mountaintops.
Now, newcomers and veterans alike are looking to up their game by undergoing plastic surgery. Deng Qian, a self-confessed cosmetic patient, told the Wall Street Journal:
“Everything above my belly button is fake.”
Deng endured over a dozen procedures, some of which changed her facial features, enlarged her breasts and slimmed her arms. “Chinese society values a pretty face above anything else… If you’re not pretty, nobody will care about you, and nobody will follow you online,” she said.
With everything in place, she expects to make roughly 600,000 yuan ($90,000) this year — close enough to meet the salaries of financial advisors, nurse practitioners, veterinarians and software developers in the US. She hopes to achieve this by endorsing plastic surgery procedures online. After all, her 23,000 Weibo followers are growing, so why not?
If anything, the trend suggests that China’s live streaming frenzy will stay for a while. Everything should be fine so long as performers adhere to censorship regulations, on top of not streaming things that are downright abominable.
Check out Deng’s story below:
