<\/p>\n
For most of her adult life, Rosie O\u2019Donnell had strong feelings about facelifts. Not casually strong, but \u201cmorally strong,\u201d as she describes it in her latest Substack, \u201cDecisions.\u201d In a revealing and personal essay, the former talk-show host shares that she had quietly appointed herself a sort of guardian of the cause, one of those women who would \u201cnever, ever\u201d go there, because doing so felt like a betrayal of feminism, of aging and, as she writes, of \u201cour team of women worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she lost 50 pounds, and everything shifted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
What she saw in the mirror wasn\u2019t exactly wrinkles, but gravity. \u201cI\u2019d look in the mirror and think, this isn\u2019t aging, this is melting with intention.\u201d The affirmations she tried to offer herself started to ring hollow. Her follow-up thought: \u201cUmm, how earned does it have to look?\u201d At some point, she realized, \u201cthere\u2019s a point where acceptance starts to feel like lying.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, O\u2019Donnell writes, she started \u201cjust gathering information,\u201d which, as she puts it, is \u201cwhat women say when they are absolutely considering something they swore they\u2019d never do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, her 13-year-old child, Clay, found out. The response was immediate: \u201cYou earned your wrinkles.\u201d O\u2019Donnell\u2019s reaction was swift: \u201cFirst of all, rude. But also\u2026correct.\u201d Clay pushed further, telling her that young women look up to her, and delivered the line that landed: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be able to respect you if you did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donnell notes dryly that it was \u201ca big statement from someone who still needs you to open jars.\u201d But more than that, Clay \u201csounded exactly like me. Like my younger, more certain, more morally rigid self had somehow moved into my house and was now judging my face.\u201d<\/p>\n
She delayed for months. She sat with it. And then came a quiet realization: If she was teaching Clay anything worth knowing, it couldn\u2019t be that her body belonged to an idea. \u201cEven a good idea,\u201d she writes. \u201cEven feminism. Because that\u2019s still not freedom\u2014that\u2019s just a different authority telling you what you\u2019re allowed to do with your own face.\u201d She wanted Clay to grow up knowing they didn\u2019t have to change, but also that they could, \u201cwithout losing moral standing in their own life.\u201d<\/p>\n
In January, O\u2019Donnell says she \u201cdid it.\u201d She found a surgeon whose work she\u2019d seen on friends, what she describes as \u201cwomen who still looked like themselves afterward, just like they had recently been told good news.\u201d Right before going under, she grabbed the doctor\u2019s hand and said, \u201cI will never say, \u2018God, I wish you did more.\u2019\u201d She meant it completely. She didn\u2019t want to become \u201cthe one that keeps moving the goalpost, never satisfied, the one that turns their own face into a problem one can never quite solve.\u201d<\/p>\n
And she does still look like herself, she says, just \u201ca slightly more well-rested, emotionally stable version.\u201d The result was what she calls a \u201clower deep-plane facelift\u201d that, by her estimation, \u201cminds its own business\u201d and \u201ccost more money than she has ever paid for a car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the thing, though\u2014no one has commented on the surgery, she says. Not a friend, not a stranger, \u201cnot even people who owe me compliments.\u201d Her daughter hasn\u2019t said a word. After a full existential feminist crisis and surgical intervention, the result was \u201czippo,\u201d which, O\u2019Donnell considers the best possible outcome as she enters her \u201cAct 3.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI just stopped arguing with the mirror,\u201d the 64-year-old shared. \u201cAnd maybe that\u2019s enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For most of her adult life, Rosie O\u2019Donnell had strong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}