Dying to Look Like Your Favorite Celebrity: When Surgery Goes Bad

Celebrity worship can be deadly—literally in this case.

Christina Ashten Gourkani, a 34-year-old “model” who underwent many cosmetic surgeries to look like Kim Kardashian, died April 20 after suffering cardiac arrest in what proved to be the last such procedure.

“In the early morning hours at approximately 4:31am on 4/20/2023 our family received a tragic phone call from a family member who was frantically screaming and crying hysterically on the other end of the line….Ashten is dying…Ashten is dying,” her loved ones wrote a statement Tuesday on the GoFundMe page that they started. “A phone call that instantly shattered our world and will forever haunt our family for the rest of our lives.”

“If you knew Ashten you knew that everyone mattered to her. She was such a caring and loving free spirit that always took the time to bring a smile to anyone’s face she crossed paths with,” the statement said. “She was the kind of person that would kneel down and talk to children at eye level, she searched for the lonely person in the corner and made them feel special as she has such a gift of connecting with people.”

The tragic death has ignited a conversation on social media about the lengths that some people will go to in order to make themselves over in the image of a celebrity that they idolize–and the kind of mental illness that would lead to such extremes of personality dysfunction.

The images of Gourkani show a severely distorted body that is far from what can be considered either aesthetic or natural. However, the question of what is “natural” is relative.

One woman, Londoner Cindy Jackson, has had 52 cosmetic procedures. She says, “For me, the best result is one that looks natural. I wouldn’t ever want anyone to stop and stare at me and say ‘that woman’s had a lot of surgery.’ I would never want to look like I’d had anything done.”  She says this after 52 medical procedures, each one involving risk, expense, and a further alienation from the body and face that Nature gave her.

Why do people put themselves at risk in order to accomplish this? Psychologists explain that whether consciously or subconsciously, patients are hoping to gain the power and attention that their celebrity lookalike gets. They warn that when a patient wants to totally transform into someone else it is a symptom of a larger issue: they suffer from low self-esteem and other related mental illnesses. People who go to extremes, like Gourkani, to alter their appearance might be obsessing over their physical flaws for hours a day.

Reputable plastic surgeons are hesitant to perform total body transformations without addressing a patient’s underlying mental health, but not all of them follow such ethical principles. Actors, music artists, action figures and even influencers like the Kardashians, are being replicated with modern plastic surgery procedures—as in the case of Christina Ashten Gourkani. Some psychologists suggest that an increase in celebrity lookalike cosmetic surgery is linked to social media. Various platforms make it easier for people to follow a celebrity’s lifestyle.

But what is not stressed is the enormous risk that any surgical procedure entails. In the case of people whose objective is to look like a celebrity, this typically involves dozens and sometimes more, of surgeries. Ms. Gourkani was only the latest victim to succumb to the temptations of what can be called celebrity-by-proxy, basking in the reflected glory of only looking like someone who is admired by the public.

One poster summed it up: “Really says something about our current society, it’s all fake and it’s killing us.”