TV star Andressa Urach plastic surgery disaster

TV star's plastic surgery disaster

Brazil's most outspoken advocate cosmetic surgery, recently went into septic shock and was placed on life support after a botched operation to augment her thighs

In this Nov. 30, 2012 file  Left photo, Andressa Urach competes in the Miss Bumbum Brazil contest in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Andressa Urach went from being a single teenage mum nicknamed "Beanpole" to a reality TV bombshell in Brazil thanks to silicone implants, anabolic steroids, a nose job, and gel and botox injections, a fact she wasn't ashamed to share with fans.

SAO PAULO (AP) - "There are plenty of ugly women," she said last year. "If you have the money, you can be beautiful. This pretty face you see here, my dear, it costs some."

More, it turns out, than she bargained for.

The 27-year-old Urach, arguably Brazil's most outspoken advocate of advancement through cosmetic surgery, recently went into septic shock and was placed on life support after a botched operation to augment her thighs, sparking a debate about the risks Brazilian women will take for beauty at a moment when the nation has surpassed the U.S. as the world's plastic surgery capital.

It led the runner-up in Brazil's "Miss Bum Bum" contest, who is still trying to fully recover, to express regret at her decision to flaunt her surgically enhanced flesh for fame and money.
"We lose our health to get rich," she recently posted on her Instagram account. "We live as if we are never going to die."
Since Urach's ordeal, several celebrities have come forward to disclose that similar procedures had sent them to the hospital. In October, a 39-year-old woman died from a pulmonary embolism hours after hydrogel was injected in her buttocks in the city of Goiana.
Experts and activists worry that Brazil's culture of beauty has numbed women to the dangers and encouraged them to experiment with riskier, untested materials and methods and even unlicensed practitioners.

"Try to be happy instead of trying to be perfect ! " You never live without wars , you simply have to learn to fight !!!" she posted on her Instagram account recently.

Brazil recently surpassed the United States in plastic surgeries, with 1.5 million procedures in 2013, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

One of Urach's closest friends, Jessica Lopes, a reality TV star she met in the Miss BumBum contest, told the celebrity news site EGO that the two used to schedule visits to the plastic surgeon together as if it were "a trip to the mall."

Many young women visit doctors asking to look like models such as Urach, or at least to improve their self-esteem.