Valeria Lukyanova has sparked international controversy by turning herself into a human doll using plastic surgery and thick layers of dramatic make-up, confessing she wishes to be considered “the most perfect woman on the internet”.
Ukraine’s Valeria Lukyanova, 23, believes she has become a living, breathing Barbie, something she sees as the ultimate embodiment of perfection.
Vice.com documentary-maker Will Fairman has gone behind the scenes with Valeria Lukyanova – who currently has 876,000 fans on her Facebook page – journeying to Ukraine to capture her idiosyncratic life on film.
Will Fairman negotiated coming to the Ukraine to film Valeria Lukyanova, despite the model being “a little bit skeptical” at first.
Valeria Lukyanova believes she is from another planet – possibly Venus, but she isn’t quite sure – so isn’t really human like the rest of us.
“She’s not a fraud,” clarified Will Fairman.
“She genuinely believes she’s from another planet. 100 per cent. She’s not making any money from her life – not even from the seminars she gives – which is originally why I thought she was doing this.”
Valeria Lukyanova, who is supported by her construction-working husband who also acts as her manager, spends the film discussing theories about her pre-Earth space life, and how she has become an object of hatred within some internet communities.
“I come from a place where only love and joy exist,” she says.
“But I noticed the media is only interested in negativity: show someone in a bad light, show someone’s mistakes.
“There are hate blogs and communities about me who post bad pictures about me and try and worsen my mood.
“Perhaps at some point I was an energy vampire, because I constantly received their negative reactions and enjoyed it. Specifically for them I created posts that would make them angry.
“But people who think badly of me just aren’t happy in their own lives. When they are happy they will forget about me.”
Valeria Lukyanova, who says she has a “small group of friends who accept me for who I am”, also admits she has visited a psychiatrist about the voices in her head.
Describing how he found Valeria, Will Fairman added: “She’s kind of like the really pretty, popular girl at school who you’re completely blown away by.
“She’s like a little queen, and she carries herself like that all the time. She never breaks. It’s not like the camera turns off and she whips out a cigarette and gets into a tracksuit.
“She’s naturally like that: a girl who has been getting attention ever since she was a teenager and gets crazy attention wherever she is.
“And she is paranoid about not looking perfect. I don’t know exactly where it comes from, but I suspect really it’s down to… she seems to have a quite a lot of issues about her physical self, and is incredibly fixated with her image.
“She manages it down to the finest detail, which is why something so much as a missing belt can trigger a stroke.”
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