During her childhood, Airi Hirase was constantly mocked for her appearance. Schoolmates called her “ugly” and even told her that she looked like a man. Over time, those experiences ended up profoundly affecting the way she saw herself.
At 15 years old, Hirase decided that she wanted to change her appearance and began considering cosmetic surgery as a possible way out. At 19, she underwent her first procedure and, from then on, began a transformation that would eventually involve more than 20 surgeries on her face and breasts.
In total, the Japanese woman says she spent approximately 24 million yen, around US$170.000, on her procedures.
Her transformation also ended up becoming content for the internet. Hirase began sharing photographs of the process and of her before-and-after, currently accumulating more than 1,1 million followers on Instagram and around 300.000 on X.
But behind the images lies a story considerably more complicated than a simple pursuit of beauty. Hirase has said that the criticism she received during her childhood caused her to develop a strong complex about her appearance, and she even came to avoid mirrors because she could not stand seeing herself.
She herself has described cosmetic surgery as “the only way she could live”, linking her decisions to the emotional wounds she had carried since that time.
To get the necessary money, she began working at a very young age. She held various jobs, including moving work and working as a security guard, while saving to pay for the procedures she had decided to undergo.
Today, her dramatic transformation has become part of her public identity and of the content she shares with her followers. Her photographs show a radical change compared with the images from her youth and have generated all kinds of reactions online.
However, her story also raises a much more uncomfortable question: how much can rejection and taunting during childhood influence the way a person perceives their own body for the rest of their life?
Airi found an answer in surgery. And now millions of people are following the result of that decision online.