'Giraffe Girl' Decides To Remove Her Rings And Stop Stretching Her Neck After 5 Years

Apr 11, 2022

The price of beauty comes at a cost these days. For some people, it may be cosmetic surgery; for others, it may be spending excessive amounts of money on clothes or shopping sprees. But, for one young woman, it came at the cost of her neck. 

Being teased in middle school, Sydney Smith, a woman from Los Angeles, spent five years trying to reach a next-level type of beauty. She said what started as being made fun of as a young girl developed into a fascination with having a longer neck. 

Smith found herself intrigued by Southeastern Asia women and would later follow in the footsteps of the culture as well. She told Huff Post in 2017 that her first step in trying to elongate her neck started by arranging a coat hanger around her neck for bed. In 2011 Smith took the first step toward her dream of being a "Giraffe Woman." 

Over time, the "Giraffe Woman" had a total of 15 handmade brass rings soldered around her neck by a friend. Despite doctors advising her against the lifestyle, Smith proceeded with the process of trying to elongate her neck. However, the neck is said to not actually have that purpose; it actually can cause major damage, including giving someone a collapsed clavicle. Now that Smith has had all of her rings removed, she said she enjoyed the process. 

"I asked myself, 'Should I stop or go for it?' knowing that I would be enslaved to a ringed necklace for the rest of my life," she said. Her confidence continued after seeing a Lady Gaga concert, "Her freak empowerment message made a special kind of sense for me," Smith said. "I figured if she can wear meat dresses, I can be a giraffe woman," Smith said.

So Smith continued on with her lifelong dream. She said, adding the rings was an adjustment to her everyday life. 

"It took a while to learn to sleep with them, but now if I take them off, my neck feels limp," she said. With time Smith would encounter more than daily neck pain, "If it's summer and the air conditioner isn't working, my neck starts to sweat and I start to smell," she said.

Smiths' fascination was some doctors' worst nightmares. "I don't recommend anyone doing this. It could injure nerves in the neck," said Dr. Jonathan Nissanoff, a Southern California orthopedic surgeon.

In time, Smith's love for the look started to weigh on her. I could not function as a long-necked woman with fifteen rings in the US. You could only do it if you were willing to isolate yourself completely and you never have to leave home. I spent five years of my life with rings around my neck, and I became very introverted and isolated," she told The Daily Mail in 2017l.

"People have this misconception that they think that your neck is going to look super long when you remove the rings," she said. "It goes back to normal. I do feel my neck is longer than when I started but I feel like it has shrunk since I took them off," Smith added.

Would you ever put 15 brass rings around your neck for 15 years? If you found this article shocking pass it along to someone who will find it interesting too!