A Chinese blogger is suspected to have taken her own life on Sunday after several botched attempts at cosmetic facial surgery, according to local media reports.
The vlogger, identified by the last name Liu, had been rescued by firefighters after standing on the 18th floor of a building on Saturday morning, a day before she died. Footage of the incident was published on social media, where the woman can be heard shouting that she did not want anyone to see her face after the surgery.
The woman reportedly was attractive and had a successful career as a vlogger, but decided to pursue plastic surgery with the aim of increasing her online following. The operation proved unsuccessful, causing her to become depressed and refuse to leave the house while her relationship with her boyfriend broke down.
China is currently experiencing a boom in its plastic surgery industry, as young people with high incomes or from wealthy families seek to boost their self-esteem. As noted last year by The Times of London:
It is a market dominated by the young. Once people wanted to change their image to improve their job prospects but the youth are now more likely to have cosmetic surgery to boost their self-esteem, according to a report by the industry last year.
With annual growth of 40 per cent, cosmetic surgery is no longer the preserve of the rich and the famous. Compared with patients in the US, those going under the knife in China are much younger — more than half are under the age of 25. Of more than eight million people who have had cosmetic surgery in China, four fifths are under the age of 30 and most are college graduates.
There has also been a rise in the popularity of online female “vloggers” (video bloggers), who have gained impressively large followings among a disproportionately single male population, allowing them to make millions of dollars in income. China is believed to have as many as 34 million fewer women than men thanks to the imposition of the draconian “one-child policy,” which led many parents to selectively abort daughters in the hope of having a son.
The spread of technology that makes it easy for individuals to communicate online has also become a threat to the government. Several “vloggers” have been arrested for upsetting Chinese Communist Party officials and have consequently found themselves arrested for “crimes” such as singing the national anthem badly and reporting on police brutality.
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
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