Stassie Karanikolaou, 24, gets candid about ‘taboo' plastic surgery procedures and body image
Stassie Karanikolaou is aiming for a more natural look.
The 24-year-old influencer and BFF to Kylie Jenner opened up about plastic surgery during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, where she talked about getting implants at a young age. She also addressed rumors that she's gotten work done on her butt.
"I have not had butt implants. The only implants that I have are in my t*****s," she said. "And I'm not saying that I haven't done other things and I haven't, you know, moved some things around or whatever the case may be. But I just feel like I was at a point in my life when I was younger and I felt like my lips needed to be big, my boobs needed to be big. Everything … my butt needed to be big."
Karanikolaou, who has been close to the Kardashian-Jenner family since she was 13 years old, has also been at the center of conversations surrounding the potential surgical enhancements that the members of that family have gotten. She's even been called to own up to the work that she's had done, much like the five sisters have.
"There's such a stigma in plastic surgery and I feel like whether you say that you've done it or whether you don't say you've done it, people are going to find a way to say something about it and like make it a negative thing," Karanikolaou explained. "No one needs to tell anyone anything if they don't want to."
Nevertheless, the influencer has spoken openly about the "taboo" topic on her social media, speaking openly about breast augmentation and lip filler. She told the podcast host Alex Cooper that lip filler was the first enhancement she got as a teen.
"Not at a good place," she said of the experience. "Do your research. I didn't do it good, I looked not cute. I had to dissolve it all, get it redone."
Karanikolaou went on to say that she's gotten lip filler "so many times" to try to correct asymmetry in her lips, but it "ends up just looking worse." She also noted that it has not gone unnoticed by her over 10 million Instagram followers.
"All my comments are 'Her lips are lopsided,' 'You're so botched.' And I’m like I literally have a drop of lip filler on one side of my lip," she said. "I've let it get to me so many times and now I'm just like, you don't know me, I don't know you so like how are you gonna sit here and comment on me, like sit and talk about my lips."
She's heard no shortage of negativity about other parts of her body as well, explaining that people have called her fake and even recalled a man saying she's "full of plastic" while she was vacationing in Greece.
"I wanted to start crying," she said of hearing the comment. "I don't want to look plastic, I don't want to look fake."
In an effort to look "more natural," she said she's revised some of the work that she's had done in the past.
"Over the past couple years, I've made my implants smaller, I've tried to make everything smaller because I just like the more natural look and I feel like you get caught up when you're younger," she explained. "You grow up, you change, you learn things, you see things differently."
Karanikolaou also noted that some of the enhancements that she's made to her body were popular at a time and have since become less desirable because of evolving beauty standards.
"For me, it is an age thing but I also feel like it's a times thing," she said, comparing beauty standards to a pair of low-rise jeans. "It's like how are you gonna change your whole life based on a trend that's a couple years [old] ... It's like you're cosmetically changing you versus throwing away some jeans."
And although she desires a new look these days, she doesn't regret the decisions she's made before.
"I wouldn't say regret. I would say I've gotten stuff done that I didn't like the result but not regret," she said. "At the time I wanted it and for the time I liked it. But I have taken it back."
Video: Stassie Karanikolaou takes magazine's Expensive Taste Test
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