Plastic Fantasic: Real Life Barbies (PHOTOS +VIDEO)

Meeting high expectations is hard work. So why bother challenging the norm when you can just turn to plastic surgery? That's what some women resort to after finding themselves competing with and being influenced by childhood frenemy Barbie. 

The Mattel-created toy, who has ridiculous proportions only found in comic books and in the fantasies of gay and straight men (36-18-38), has been the companion of millions of women and girls around world for 50 years and has found herself transported into the real world via fantastic plastic enhancements.

Take the young lady above for example. Some say she was harmed by Barbie, that the doll, which champions a Eurocentric idea of beauty, distorted hers and millions of children's perception of themselves. Others view the action figure, who is monogamous, straight and most likely, never kissed a girl or owned a sex toy, is a harmless tool and companion for little girls.

One person who is not buying Barbie as a harmless enabler is college student and former high school cheerleader Galia Slayer, who built a life-size Barbie to illustrate the dangers of eating disorders. 

"In January 2007," Slayen wrote recently on her Huffington Post College blog, "I was looking for a way to make my peers realize the importance of eating disorders and body image issues. I was frustrated after quitting the cheerleading squad, frustrated with pressures to look and act a certain way and most of all frustrated with the eating disorder controlling my life. I wanted to do something that would turn others' apathy into action."

Go to the next page for more Barbie.