She is just 19 but she’s already the star of many publications, has made several TV appearances and has thousands of fans on Youtube and Facebook.
But Anastasia Shpagina from Odesa is no famous singer or movie star. She’s famous for her freaky anime-like look.
To prepare her claim to fame – her face — Shpagina spends two to three hours each day putting on her extreme makeup, making her eyes enormous and reducing her nose and lips. Special blue contacts and white-pale skin add to the anime look. Waist-long pink hair and dreamy dresses complete it.
Shpagina says she sees herself as a fairy, living in her own dream world, and says she doesn’t like her normal face. She adopted the anime look after finishing high school.
A hair stylist and makeup artist, she wakes up at 5 a.m. to make it to the work for 9 a.m., using that time to put on her mask. Her “fairy” make up tutorial video has been viewed more than four million times.
Her mother Tetiana Shpagina told local Ukraina TV station that she is proud of her daughter. Incredulous fans from all over the world comment on her photos in social networks, writing “Is she human?” A college student from the U.S. even recorded a marriage proposal video for the living anime girl, calling her “the answer to his prayers.”
But Shpagina is not alone in her extreme appearance.
Also from Odesa, Valeria Lukianova, age unknown, became internationally famous as the “living Barbie from Ukraine.” The blond woman with a doll-like face and 86-47-86 measurements wears tons of makeup but claims the only plastic surgery she’s been through is breast enhancement.
She claims her freakishly small waist is natural, though longtime Internet fans say she once confessed to having two ribs removed. Lukianova sticks to the breast-surgery-only version.
At a local TV show she explained the changes in her appearance saying “her higher person set the conditions for (how I look).”
In interviews Lukianova sometimes mentions her husband, who, she says, fully supports her interests.
Lukianova says she doesn’t eat anything except fresh juices and smoothies. She weighs 42 kilograms, despite a height of 172 centimeters.
While Shpagina seems to live normally with an abnormal look, Lukianova goes further. She claims to be Amatue, goddess of the sun, hailing from the Pleiades, a star cluster in the constellation of Taurus.
She tours with esoteric lectures, charging $80 per ticket to her two-day presentations.
There she speaks about her previous lives, her cosmic origin, her out-of-body experiences and meditations. Over 232,000 people have subscribed to her Amatue page on the Vkontakte network, and her Youtube channel has almost 14 millions views.
She also seems to have started a trend. On her website, www.amatue21.com, young women upload photos of themselves in doll-like makeup and poses. Her Vkontakte account has photos of her and her friend Olga Oleinik as two Barbies posing together.
Oleinik has followed the same path. She wears doll-like make-up, has body of a Barbie and claims to be engaged in esoteric practices. She names Lukianova as the person she spiritually closest to and has chosen Dominika as her spiritual name. Her Vkontakte account says she reads Carlos Castaneda and Osho, both mystics gurus. While Lukianova gives esoteric lectures, Oleinik designs clothes for “cosmic persons” like herself.
Oleinik, as well as Lukianova and Shpagina, didn’t respond to Kyiv Post inquiries for interviews.
Meanwhile, the online popularity of the Odesa dolls rises daily. While Shpagina’s fans are happy enough with her make-up tutorials and tips, Lukianova’s subscribers often ask her to “send a ray of light,” for which she generously answers “I’m sending.” Sexually harassing comments are also common, though they don’t get much of a response.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected].
