Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
The deep-plane face-lift has been on a generational run. The procedure went from a hush-hush technique appreciated by those in the know to being publicly flaunted by the likes of Kris Jenner, who recently went on record to make sure everybody knew just how much she loves hers (courtesy of Dr. Steven Levine). The deep-plane face-lift has entered the collective consciousness, prompting the people of the internet to point their fingers at various other celebrities and accuse them of having gone under the knife incognito. But you know who got one and actually managed to fly under the radar this whole time? Rosie O’Donnell.
On May 25, the actress published her latest Substack post: a poem (yes, a poem) that details her complicated feelings about the deep-plane face-lift she got in January. “I used to feel very strongly about facelifts,” she wrote. “Not casually — morally. I had assigned myself as head of all women who would never — ever. I thought it was a betrayal. Of feminism. Of aging. Of our team of women worldwide. And then I lost 50 pounds.” (In a 2021 Vulture interview, O’Donnell said she had vowed never to have plastic surgery and explained that her decision had been helping her get more roles as she approached 60. “I was going to look the way a woman my age should look,” she said.)
After her significant weight loss, O’Donnell claimed, and despite her best efforts to accept her “earned” wrinkles, she began researching surgical options. But her plans were derailed for months when Clay, her 13-year-old child, voiced their feelings about their mom getting plastic surgery. “It was not subtle. ‘You earned your wrinkles.’ Which — first of all — rude. But also … correct,” O’Donnell wrote. “Then clay said, ‘Young women look up to you.’ And finally — with strong effect — ‘I wouldn’t be able to respect you if you did it.’ And that one … landed.”
But ultimately, O’Donnell went through with it, deciding that exercising the free will she has and achieving a “less haunted” version of herself didn’t mean she was compromising her morals. “If I’m teaching clay anything, it can’t be that my body belongs to an idea either,” she wrote. “Even a good idea. Even feminism.”
The comedian claimed that nobody, not even her friends or her teenager, had noticed. “Which honestly is the best possible outcome,” she wrote. “I didn’t disappear, I didn’t become someone else — I just stopped arguing with the mirror.” However, while she doesn’t “owe anyone an explanation,” O’Donnell said she felt the urge to come clean because of a “sense of deceit,” which she said mirrors how she felt when she was a closeted woman in entertainment during the ’90s and early aughts.
In the Substack post, she went on to explain that her feeling of shame around her secret was also rooted in the privilege required to spend more than she has ever spent on a car to alter her appearance. It’s “the gross excess that wounds me,” she wrote. But she concluded she is happy to have the freedom to choose and “use her voice” for “the girl I was, the woman I am, and all those joining my ranks we carry on in act 3. This is me.”
Stay in touch.
The latest in style, self, culture, and power in your inbox.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice
