The parents of an 11-year-old girl let their daughter get plastic surgery because of the way friends and schoolmates were making fun of her for her looks.
Bella Harrington, from Virginia, had her ears pinned back after bullies wouldn’t stop making fun of her for them. Harrington says she never gave her ears much thought, and it wasn’t until people started making fun of her for them that she became self-conscious of them.
Bella told People: "They would always point it out, but then the more people pointed it out is when I wanted to change it. I thought that they stuck out way too much."
Bella’s mother Sabrina decided she didn’t want to see her daughter suffer anymore, and finally let her have the procedure, called otoplasty.
"They were being mean, saying different things. One thing they said, she had elf ears," Sabrina said of her child’s bullies.
"It’s no different than getting braces, that changes your appearance. If it’s going to make you feel better about yourself, so be it," said Sabrina while explaining why she let her young daughter get surgery.
The procedure was performed in December, by Dr. Joe Niamtu, who says he was honored to have done it.
"It was my honor to help this beautiful young lady to escape the effect of peer bullying from her protruding. Even small facial deformities can produce very negative psychological consequences in childhood that can lead to a lifetime of low self-esteem and negative body image. My biggest reward," Dr. Joe Niamtu wrote on Facebook.
Dr. Niamtu says with corrective cosmetic surgery, it's the younger the better. In fact he says children much younger than Bella have come into his office to get similar procedures done.
"We like to treat these children before they enter school, so it’s not uncommon that I’m doing 4- or 5-year-olds. And the reason is bullying or peer pressure. It’s been shown to psychologically to have the ability to affect their self-esteem or body image for the rest of their life," he told WRIC.
Meanwhile, a lot of people do not agree with Bella's parents' decision and have criticised them on Twitter.
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