HOW WOULD YOU feel if you were told you needed plastic surgery at 14?

Shimali De Silva, an Australian singing hopeful on the Korean reality show K-Pop Star Hunt, was brought to a plastic surgeon by show organisers.

There, she was told she needed surgery if she was to succeed in the competition.

Um, ouch.

Shimali, who now lives in Hong Kong, told the South China Morning Post,

The doctor brought out this terrible mugshot and said to me, ‘You’re 14, but you look 30.

I was trying not to be affected by it, but as a 14-year-old, people tell you that the way you look is important if you want to break into this industry; that sunk in and I started tearing up.

Despite holding her ground in the surgery office and stating that she would not undergo any surgery as a road to career success, she rang her mother Ruanthi immediately, crying in the toilet:

We teach our children to be proud of who they are, that they should be judged not by the colour of their skin, but by their good actions

And to think, we thought The X Factor was exploitative!

Watch this beautiful, talented girl’s rendition of “Use Somebody” here. Rock on, Shimali!

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