A Russian mother and influencer badly injured her spine while trying to pull off a viral challenge set to Nicki Minaj song “High School.”
Celebrities like Ciara have mastered the challenge, which pulls from a squatting pose that Minaj did in the “High School” music video, but 32-year-old Mariana Barutkina landed in the hospital after trying the stunt.
In an Instagram post from last Thursday (July 31), Barutkina attempted the pose in stilettos while balancing herself on top of baby formula and a saucepan. The challenge took a turn for the worse when she fell and fractured her spine just eight weeks after giving birth. In the clip below, Barutkina lost her balance and tried to grab for the woman assisting her before landing on the kitchen floor.
“TREND OR WHOLE SPINE?” Barutkina captioned the post, translated from Russian to English. “I decided to start a blog, first content shoot — and here I am leaving the doctor with a diagnosis of “uncomplicated compression flexion fracture of the [the] body.”
“Irony? Karma? Or just life, which always tests our strength at the most unexpected moment. 🤣” she added.

Barutkina has chosen not to take on interviews about the embarrassing fall, although she’s come to embrace her new “star” status, as she wrote in the caption below.
“People, thank you for your popularity, for your concerns and for your comments,” she wrote. “I’m doing great, following the guidelines and now living in ‘star’ status.”
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