The human Barbie with a brain even bigger than her 34F chest: Meet the woman who spent thousands turning herself into a real-life doll at the same time as earning a law degree

Charlotte Poole, 22, is a quiet, shy, introverted homebody. She likes reading (she's halfway through Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray), watching television (documentaries, not soaps or The Only Way Is Essex, thank you very much), going to the gym, obsessing over anything Japanese and following current affairs online ('People moan all the time, but David Cameron seems like a genuinely nice person').
She wears hoodies and jeans, 'onesies' and fluffy pink slippers and likes hanging out with her two younger brothers, Ryan and Callum.

She describes herself as a vegetarian, an atheist and has 12 GCSEs, three A-levels, a law degree, a first class masters in fashion ­marketing, a good job working as social media coordinator for a fashion ­company and is planning a PhD.

Barbie girl: Charlotte Poole, 22, from Leicester, as her alter ego Charlotte Elizabeth, the real-life Barbie doll

Oh yes, and she also has a pair of enormous fake 34F breasts of which she is inordinately proud.
Plus a curtain of platinum-dyed blonde hair and an alter ego called Charlotte Elizabeth who hits the town every so often dressed as a life-size Barbie with teeny weeny pink skirts, very revealing basques, acres of fake tan, towering heels and that alarmingly buoyant chest.

This week, Charlotte has been all over the news, caused a Twitter storm, dominated online forums and has been contacted from around the world with requests for interviews, photos, advice and endless smutty inquiries about the 'useability' of her breasts.

 

Not, she's the first to admit, because she's done anything especially dramatic, or even very newsworthy. But simply because people can't get their head round the fact that an attractive young woman with qualifications coming out of her ears, a lovely manner, a close and loving ­family and long-term boyfriend called Samuel who prefers her 'au naturel', would choose to spend thousands turning herself into a life-size Barbie doll with huge bouncing boobs and inch-deep make-up.

So far, the comments have ranged from 'Go girl, go! You show them', to 'She's obviously a slut', and 'Just because she's passed an exam doesn't stop her being a bimbo slag'.

She's been labelled a 'weird Barbie fetishist', and a 'total babe', likened to Reese Witherspoon's ditzy blonde character in the Hollywood movie Legally Blonde about a girl trying to win back her boyfriend by getting a law degree, and dismissed as 'Pig-ugly without her make-up'.

Legally blonde: Charlotte has a law degree as well as a first class masters degree in fashion marketing

It must have been quite a few days. 

The Charlotte who answers the door to her parents' neat Leicester semi is neither slaggy nor sluttish.

She's polite, gentle, very softly ­spoken — with a bit of a lisp — and not at all brash. She's wearing jeans, fluffy ­slippers and a grey sweatshirt and is very attractive.

'Someone spotted my blog and it went from there,' she explains. ­'Suddenly, on Wednesday, I was in the national press. People have been sending videos of me from China and Hong Kong. I've been getting texts from people in Hollywood.

'But what's the big deal? Is it really so amazing for someone who likes dressing up as Barbie to have a law degree? I just really like studying — I think it's a really worthwhile way to spend your time and I'm really, really good at focusing and ­disciplining myself,' she says.

But she also really likes Barbie — and has done ever since she was a girl — and has always admired the likes of Pamela Anderson and Melinda Messenger and their fellow blonde glamour models.

Tough childhood: Charlotte, pictured at the age of four in Mallorca, was mercilessly bullied at school

So, after 12-hour stints slaving over Tort and Common Law at Nottingham Trent University library and endless essays and exams, Charlotte (together with her Swiss friend Belinda, another Barbie fan with matching peroxide hair) would dress up as her blonde plastic heroine and hit the town.

Which, needless to say, caused quite a stir.

As dad Steve, 55, a telecoms system analyst, puts it: 'When she comes down in those very short skirts and those suspendery things, of course I worry. What father wouldn't? But whatever makes her happy, makes me happy.'

And therein lies the nub of it. Because for years before her Barbie alter ego was born, Charlotte was utterly, heart-breakingly miserable.

It all started when she was 11, painfully shy, chubby, flat-chested ('Which, oddly made me look even fatter') and horribly bullied at school.

'Boys would kick me in the park shouting: 'You're fat, you're fat, you're fat!' and I'd just stand there, wishing I could disappear as they gave me the biggest bruises,' she says quietly.

Internet sensation: Charlotte has grabbed the attention of people around the world with her blog

'I had people setting my hair on fire with lighters at school. They'd shout at me, and pull my skirt up above my head, and throw food at me.

'For a year or two, I was just in ­solitude. I didn't have any mates. I'm not sure why it happened, but I think to be popular you have to be confident and outspoken and I was so shy. I was always crying and dreaded going to school. It was the worst time in my life. But then again people around the world have much worse hardships,' she adds quickly.

To make it worse, she was slipping behind in her schoolwork.
'I had a really poor reading and ­writing age and I had to have loads of special lessons.'
And then when she was 14 she discovered dieting and hair dye and make-up. And everything changed.

She limited herself to 800 calories a day ('I had a bad eating disorder'), shrank to a size 6 to 8, dyed her hair white-blonde and embraced make-up with gusto.

Table service: Charlotte funded her law degree by working at Hooters in Nottingham

'I went from being a chubby kid that no one noticed to someone who couldn't walk past a building site without everyone wolf-whistling. I couldn't believe it. I thought: “Wow, am I attractive now?” When you've never been considered attractive your whole life, that's a really big deal.'
She made friends, gained confidence and her schoolwork improved stratospherically.
But there was one (sorry, two) thing(s) missing.
'I was completely flat-chested and I'd wanted a boob-job since I was about 13. I used to dream about it every day, but anything like that had always been out of my family's reach — so it was always: 'If I win the Lottery, I'll have my boobs done.'
Until one day when she was just 18, she couldn't bear it any longer and sweet-talked her dad into paying £3,995 for the operation.
'I was a soft touch,' he says. 'But she'd wanted it for ever. It wasn't just a whim. And it's made her really happy and that's all I care about.'
She went from a 34A to 34F in a 40-minute single operation in her first month at Nottingham Trent University and for weeks had to sleep wearing a sports bra and sitting up.
'It stung a lot. And for at least a month it felt like someone was pushing on my ribcage with two huge rocks, because the skin was so tight. Looking back, it does seem quite a jump so young, but I never once regretted it. It changed everything.'
And it heralded the arrival of 'Charlotte Elizabeth Barbie', a vision of pink and blonde and fake-tanned flesh.

'It was a bit like putting on armour. She isn't me — she's fun and sexy and an escape. The minute I become Charlotte Elizabeth, I feel more extrovert and confident and outrageous and it's lovely to get all the attention.
'People constantly stop me for pictures. Mostly they're nice, though some give me distasteful looks and call me a 'slut' or a 'slag'. But if they're nasty, who cares? It's not the real me. Mostly it's just fun.'
As Charlotte Elizabeth took off — with a 'Barbie' wardrobe worth ­thousands paid for by holiday jobs and her own 'Charlotte Elizabeth' blog in which she gives beauty, fitness and cosmetic surgery tips and fends off endless inquiries as to whether her breasts are 'nice to the touch' — so did Charlotte's confidence.
She got a part-time job at Hooters — the American bar chain where waitresses wear tight tops designed to reveal and emphasise their breasts — took up body-building, excelled in her studies and had the time of her life.
'I was indescribably happy at ­university,' Charlotte says.
She also met Samuel Pyle, a fellow student (the pair have been together for four years) who says they're together 'because we're best friends and intellectual equals', but also likes her boobs 'very much'.

Life in plastic: The 22-year-old poses alongside her fashion icons at a shop in Hong Kong

'He swears he would definitely still be with me if I didn't have them, but I'm not sure,' says Charlotte.
Being Charlotte Elizabeth sounds exhausting. 'Oh God, it takes ages to get ready — at least three hours!'
There's her roots to be touched up and conditioned, hot rollers, full body fake tan (always with a nice bit of glitter), full make-up, eyebrows, false eyelashes, lips...
And an outfit to choose from the rows and rows of pink frilly skirts, shoes, bags and enormous fuchsia bikini tops neatly stacked in the wall of wardrobes of her very pink bedroom. 
'And I always take it all off when I get home — even if I'm really drunk. I don't want an orange pillow with two black circles on it.'
Juggling the two Charlottes sounds even harder.
Charlotte Elizabeth's blog and Twitter feed is a funny mixture of erudite quotes from Tolstoy, Darwin and Stephen Hawking and searing detail about her boob-job.

Glamour: Charlotte had few complaints from customers when she joined a Hooters bikini contest last year

There are gushing confessions about how much she loves having her hair dyed next to recommendations for TV documentaries on North Korea and science and philosophy articles in the Guardian as well as complaints that during a holiday job, M&S made her wear a bigger ­uniform so she didn't distract the customers.
But the real shame is how much bile her Barbie look attracts — ­particularly from women.

'Most reaction is positive, but I've also had girls pulling my hair and trying to fight me and saying:
'You think you look so good, don't you? You slag, you slut.” People instantly assume that just because I have platinum blonde hair, I'm stupid, which is terrible. It's much harder going out on my own in Leicester like that, because girls just want to fight with you. It's not like on a student night where everyone's up for a laugh.'
But doesn't that bother her? 'The nasty stuff is more online than in ­reality — there's lots of 'all boobs, no brains',' she says. 'But I think it's just a cultural stereotype. I think a lot of people judge people on how they look.
'Lots of people think if you choose to look really plastic you probably have a very shallow motivation for doing so and that there's probably not a lot more to you than that...'

Life in plastic: Charlotte said she would like 'a cuter, more buttony, nose' and plans to have Botox

When with Charlotte, there ­patently is. She's bright and chatty and full of opinions. She prefers U.S. to British politics ('I was so into the ­American election. When Obama won I felt like crying in relief!'), adores the Royal Family ('even though I know it's a really dated concept I just love them and I'm so excited about the baby') and is very aware of the big wide world outside Leicester.

'I worry so much about animal cruelty and why people are so obsessed with trashy celebrities who don't do anything when 30,000 children die every day in Africa.'

And what else does she want to do with her life?

'I want to see as much of the world as I can in the time I've got,' she says. 'And I'd like a cuter, more
buttony, nose. And my teeth done as well. And maybe some fillers and Botox when I'm older.'

None of which, her parents tell me afterwards, very firmly, they're prepared to pay for — 'She should leave her face alone, it could go wrong.'

In the meantime, she's planning a year abroad teaching English as a foreign language with Samuel — they both gained the teaching ­qualification last year ('We were ready to go to South Korea but when we looked at it on the map, the school was next to loads of whale fishing factories...').

Surgery: Charlotte, pictured at the age of 16, said she dreamed every day about having a boob job

She wants to travel lots, do a phD (if she can get funding) get a decent job when the economy perks up and do a bit more Barbie.
'I'll maybe stop when I'm 25. And definitely when I'm 30. That's way too old to be Barbie, don't you think?'
And with that, I leave her, carefully laying out a selection of minuscule basques on her bright pink bedspread — right next to the 20,000-word glossy masters dissertation that won her a distinction and untold praise from her tutors.