Story By: Lisa-Maria Goertz, Sub-Editor: Joana Mihajlovska, Agency: Newsflash
A diminutive Mexican TV star who became famous by pretending to be a little girl in a hit show developed tumours after decades of bandaging her chest to make her seem like a child.
Maria Antonieta de las Nieves, 70, played the character La Chilindrina in the popular Mexican comedy sketch show El Chavo del Ocho, which started airing in 1971.
The actress recently spoke about her ordeal following decades of playing a little girl and bandaging her chest to make it appear flat, which she said ended up triggering the growth of tumours and suspicion of cancer.
During an interview with TV host Yordi Rosado, the actress said: “I squashed and bandaged them to look like a girl.
“But I was suffocating, the very first time I wondered how long I would be able to last with it on. Well, I lasted 50 years.
“And what happened after 50 years with a compressed bust? Well, I got married and had a son, I had horrible tumours in my breasts, I could not feed my baby properly because the milk did not come out.”
Maria went on to describe suffering infection after having the lumps removed, which fortunately turned out to be benign.
She added: “I was all swollen and to remove the tumours they had to remove the fat and everything, and I got a really serious infection. I almost lost a breast.
“They had to operate on me and put prostheses on me, but I didn’t like them because they were big, so I had them taken out and now they are empty, you don’t know what I suffered for my Chilindrina.”
La Chilindrina is a mischievous eight-year-old girl who became a much-loved character in Mexico for the show, which was given a ‘Golden play button’ by Google for being “the first show on Mexican television to obtain a million subscribers” on YouTube in 2016.
The ViralTab page is created by and dedicated to professional, independent freelance journalists. It is a place for us to showcase our work. When our news is sold to our media partners, we will include the link here.
