Alicia Douvall after having facial implants removed following complications
It cost her her fortune and the men
she loved. And by the time former glamour model Alicia Douvall had
ploughed more than £1.5million into becoming Britain's poster girl for
plastic surgery, it very nearly destroyed her relationship with her
teenage daughter Georgia.
After
Alicia's craving to look like a human Barbie doll led her to have more
than 350 procedures - even having her toes shortened so that her feet
would look good in sandals - Georgia had had enough. Fearful that her
mother would die on the operating table, she issued an ultimatum: 'Stop
having surgery or I'll leave home.'
It
was the wake-up call Alicia needed. In desperation, she wrote to almost
a dozen cosmetic surgeons begging them to repair her ravaged looks.
Eventually she found two who agreed to help. And now, finally, she is
revealing the full results.
In
a risky nine-hour operation costing £25,000, Alicia had horrific cheek
implants removed and her frozen smile restored by Jan Stanek and
Caroline Mills.
The results from the work carried out in March are so good that she is now regaining her confidence in her looks.
'They
told me there was a chance I wouldn't wake up from the anaesthetic or
that it wouldn't work and I could end up as some hideous monster,'
Alicia admits.
'Frankly
I didn't care. I was fully prepared to put my life on the line to get
my natural face back. They had to break my jaw and tighten the muscle.
My ears had to be cut off and I had to have screws put into the right
side of my jaw to compensate for muscle damage.
'My nose had to be cut off to lift my
lip in the hope I would get my smile back. They warned me there was no
guarantee how my face would heal. Thankfully, my smile has come back in
the past month and I am so grateful. It means my youngest daughter
Papaya can see me smile for the first time.'
For
Georgia, 18, the restoration of her mother's looks has been an enormous
relief. 'I tried to stop her having more procedures lots of times,'
she says, speaking for the first time about her mother's addiction.
Alicia Douvall with her children Georgie age 18 and baby Papaya
'As I got older and realised it
was dangerous and saw the pain she went through, I tried to talk her
out of the operations. Four years ago, I had to call an ambulance
because she was in so much pain after one procedure. It's put me off
cosmetic surgery for life. My mother was constantly wrapped in bandages
like an Egyptian mummy.'
It
was after having implants intended to make her look like Angelina Jolie
went horribly wrong two years ago that Alicia began to realise her
passion for the surgeon's knife was transforming her into a stretched
and deformed Barbie.
'I had
turned myself into a Frankenstein. I looked like a bad drag queen,' she
admits. 'When Papaya was born 18 months ago, I was overjoyed. Yet I
wouldn't have any photographs taken holding her because I looked so
terrible. I couldn't even smile at my new baby.'
Alicia wants safeguards put in place and to warn girls plastic surgery is not a cure for emotional distress
She is so shocked that she
allowed her addiction to threaten her life that she is now calling for
new safeguards to protect women from unscrupulous cosmetic surgeons.
Alicia also wants to warn young girls that plastic surgery is not a cure
for emotional distress.
'Lots
of people think it will make them happy, not understanding that filling
their bodies with plastic is not a panacea for whatever insecurities
they have,' she says. Best known for her kiss-and-tell affairs with
celebrities including music mogul Simon Cowell and actor Mickey Rourke,
Alicia says that for most of her adult life she was like a drug addict
looking for another fix.
'My
obsession has ruined my life. I spent every penny on cosmetic surgery.
I live in a rented apartment. I have nothing to show for all the years
when I was earning big money. I'm not in a relationship because no man
wants to be with an obsessive who wants to have surgery every week.'
As
Alicia's addiction grew, she trawled the world for surgeons who would
agree to ever more extensive operations. In one botched episode, a nerve
on the left side of her face was severed, which locked her face in a
frozen stare.
Pictured in June 2012, Alicia says her two daughters, Georgia and Papaya made her seek help for a third time
Eventually she was diagnosed as
suffering from a form of body dysmorphia, an obsessive compulsive
disorder which causes victims to become preoccupied with their physical
appearance.
She believes an unhappy childhood in Horsham, West
Sussex, with a father who used to call her ugly contributed to her
condition: 'My Barbie doll was my escape and I identified with her so
much that I wanted to look like her.
'I
had my first breast augmentation as a teenager and became a glamour
model. I was earning £5,000 a month, but I just never believed I was
good-looking enough,' she says.
Since
then she has had 71 operations under general anaesthetic alone. 'I've
had so many operations I can't feel my stomach, my left breast, or
anything under my right arm,' she says. 'The only fake thing now is my
30DD boobs. They will have to stay because I'm not going to let anyone
cut me open again.
'It's like being an alcoholic,' she observes. 'I had to get to the lowest point before I could find my way out.'
Alicia with glamour models Linsey Dawn and Kathy (left) at a party for Front magazine, August 2001
The plastic surgery look develops from September 2003 (left) through June 2006 (right)
Alicia in December 2006 and in March 2013 after vowing to never go under the surgeons knife again
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