Jamie Lee Curtis says plastic surgery trends 'are wiping out generations of beauty': 'Once you mess with your face, you can't get it back'
Jamie Lee Curtis is sharing her thoughts about plastic surgery and social media a couple of years after opening up about how a procedure led her to an over decades-long addiction.
"I tried plastic surgery and it didn’t work. It got me addicted to Vicodin. I’m 22 years sober now," the 62-year-old told Fast Company.
The actress has previously explained her journey with sobriety in an interview with Variety for the 2019 "Recovery Issue," where she said that she had struggled with addiction to both pills and alcohol. As for her over 10-year dependency on Vicodin in particular, she revealed that it all started with a surgery that she felt compelled to get after a cameraman commented on her "puffy eyes" on set.
"I naturally had puffy eyes. If you see photographs of me as a child, I look like I haven’t slept. I’ve just always been that person, and we were shooting a scene in a courtroom with that kind of high, nasty fluorescent light, and it came around to my coverage in the scene, and [the cameraman] said, 'I’m not shooting her today. Her eyes are too puffy,'" she told Variety. "I was so mortified and so embarrassed and had just so much shame about it that after that movie, I went and had routine plastic surgery to remove the puffiness. They gave me Vicodin as a painkiller for something that wasn’t really painful."
While chatting with Fast Company about the growing popularity of plastic surgery today, Curtis shared her honest thoughts.
"The current trend of fillers and procedures, and this obsession with filtering, and the things that we do to adjust our appearance on Zoom are wiping out generations of beauty," she said. "Once you mess with your face, you can’t get it back."
She also noted the impact that social media has and the pressure that many people might face to alter their appearance as a result of it.
"I use social media to sell things and amplify things I care about. Period. The rest is cancer. I never read one comment," she said. "It’s also very dangerous. It’s like giving a chainsaw to a toddler. We just don’t know the longitudinal effect, mentally, spiritually and physically, on a generation of young people who are in agony because of social media, because of the comparisons to others. All of us who are old enough know that it’s all a lie. It’s a real danger to young people."
Leaked findings from a Facebook study recently revealed that the company knows about the damage caused by Instagram, showing that there has been an increase in both anxiety and depression in young women and girls as a result of the photo-sharing app. The study also noted worsening issues with body image.