Barbie lookalike Olga Oleinik, whose doll-like features trigger reverence and repulsion, says she now feels 'in harmony'

In the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa, known for its multiculturalism, unique brand of humour, rich clubbing culture and sex tourism, a strange new trend has emerged that locals are calling Barbie flu.

First there was Valeria Lukianova, who turned heads by spending hours every day styling herself as a human Barbie. Soon, several others had followed suit. Within weeks they had become an internet sensation.

But why? Olga Oleinik has no qualms about her appearance as she meets the Guardian, dressed in futuristic overalls of her own design, five-inch heeled shoes, false hair, false eyelashes, false nails, eye lenses, and a thick layer of makeup. Oleinik said she needs all these artifices to "feel in harmony" with her inner self.

"I've never aimed to look like Barbie. People call us this way. I have more of a space or fantasy image," she said. "But I think Barbie is a common image of beautiful girls."

Some find the trend disturbing, a hyperbolic example of the synthetic look that has taken off in former Soviet republics since the end of the Soviet Union. One website devoted to trying to puncture the human Barbie bubble called the living dolls "a mix of Photoshop, sky-high pathos, worthlessness in life, narcissism and complete nonsense about astral and other esoteric".

Oleinik is undeterred. "They are underdeveloped people," she says of her critics. "I treat them with compassion."