The incredible true-life story revealing the background and motivation behind a trailblazing journey of self reinvention.

ISBN-10: 1843580497 ISBN-13: 978-1843580492

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Get the the signed hardback at a paperback price - only from this site. Signed copies of my autobiography have become collectors items. In the USA they are selling for over $100 but you can get them here for only £8.95!

Published in 2002 by Metro

Press Reviews

"A strong will for total reinvention. The Girl Who Would Be Barbie? She is more complex than that.  Ruth Laura Edlund

"Cindy's upbringing was bizarre in the extreme...It's a much more complex and peculiar tale than you might think...And all along, what was going on inside was far more interesting. Emma Smith, Western Daily Press

"She had an unconventional hillbilly childhood, being raised on a ramshackle Ohio farm by a madcap inventor father and her eccentric mother...A member of Mensa, Jackson's materplan to transform her looks - and her life - worked."  Hannah Stephenson, Press Association

"Living Doll is an unputdownable read about the brainy and beautiful Cindy's unusual life and takes the lid off the cosmetic surgery industry. Fascinating stuff."  Sally Neville, Hot Gossip, UK

"From lonely outcast, to punk misfit, to celebrity socialite, she is an amalgamation of all her personas."  Jane Savva, Daily Record, Scotland

"A case of the all-American girl who didn't fit the cheerleading prom-queen image to which teenage girls were, and still are, supposed to aspire."  David Thomas, Sunday Telegraph

"The Cindy Jackson story is poignant and inspiring. It also resonates with people all over the world who are thinking of altering their appearance."  Marianne Shaefer-Trench, ZDF Television, Germany

Prologue from Living Doll
By Cindy Jackson

I first went public with my cosmetic surgery back in 1989. As a result, I inadvertently became famous for my operations, which is something I never expected. Since then a good deal of misinformation about me has found its way into the public domain. I have long been uncomfortable with this and that's one reason I decided to write my autobiography. Whether the facts were distorted in my favour or against me is immaterial. From my point of view, attempts to sensationalise my story have been disappointing because the truth is much more incredible than anything that has been invented so far.

There has also been speculation about my family and background. Some of the things that have been said and written about them are so wide of the mark that I felt duty-bound to set the record straight for the sake of my loved ones. This is also their story. And - as is the case with anyone who writes with honesty and candour about their families - I had to open some closets and give a few skeletons a good rattle to do so. I am grateful to all of my relatives for giving their blessing for this book to go ahead, especially my sister Gloria. She preserved memories and photographs that would have otherwise been lost forever - as well as the Barbie doll I was given in 1961 that became my talisman.

My sanity and motivations for transforming my face and body to such an extreme extent have been hotly debated in classrooms and on thousands of Internet sites. I appear in many textbooks and have even been the subject of several university theses. Certain sectors of the art world have declared me a "performance artist." Barbie doll aficionados either dismiss me outright or regard me as the ultimate collector. Frankly, I find a good deal of this attention - and the level of emotion attached to it - rather spurious since no one could have known the whole story until now.

Over the years I've been sent hundreds of thousands of letters and case histories from my fellow cosmetic surgery patients. They wanted to know how I managed to deal with the medical establishment and get the results I wanted while so many others, both in and out of the public eye, have failed. This book is also for them.

Finally, the question that I am most often asked: "Why on earth would anyone have so much cosmetic surgery?" is answered within these pages.

In order to fully explain all of the above it was necessary to go back to the very beginning and share the genetic and environmental influences that shaped me just as profoundly as did the surgeon's scalpel. For the very first time, here is my extraordinary true life story. Because, as John Keats so famously said, "Truth is beauty and beauty truth... 
 

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