Woman Fractures Legs Repeatedly in Order to Become 6-Foot-Tall Model

Alexandra Transer is a 30-year-old Russian woman who dreams of becoming a model. Told by agents that 5’4 was too short, she’s undergoing a series of surgeries that will make her taller. But model-quality beauty doesn’t come without pain: Raw Story reports that the procedure includes both fracturing and stretching her bones.

These “leg extensions” were apparently suggested by the director of a modeling school:

“I had tried to get into modelling school when I was 17 but was told by the director that because I had stopped growing the only way I would ever be the right height was if I grew leg extensions. So that’s exactly what I decided to do. At first, my parents were really against it. My mum is only 5.2-foot and my dad 5.5-foot, so we are a family of shorties,” said Transer, the Mirror reported.

The procedure Transer underwent is called the Ilizarov apparatus method, and it involves breaking her legs and then installing cages around them to put the bones under tension. Transer has already grown 2.5 inches and hopes to be 6 feet tall by 2018, when she’ll be 33.

Even though she knows that she’ll likely be too old to be model by that time, Transer looks forward to at least looking like one. She plans on dying her hair blonde to complete the look.