On a recent podcast, Megan Fox opens up about getting ‘crucified’ for being plastic, all the beauty work she has had done – and the one secret surgery that she is gatekeeping
Megan Fox has opened up about plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures. Speaking on an episode of Alex Cooper’s podcast Call Her Daddy, Fox spoke candidly about the beauty work she has had over the years, casually listing off procedures that she has – and hasn’t – undergone.
“I’m just going to go through all the things that I’ve done,” she says. “Because I feel like there’s this stigma. And I’m not going to win… however, I’m hoping it sets some people free.” Fox then reveals that she had a boob job when she was 21 or 22, and then had them redone twice after having her children. She also had her nose done in her early 20s, as well as filler, Botox and one other secret procedure which she says she is “gatekeeping”. “It was really good and it’s not a known plastic surgery. People don’t even really know about it,” she said on the podcast.
Alongside the procedures she has had done, Fox listed everything that she says she has been accused of doing but hasn’t done. “I’ve never had a facelift of any kind. So no midface lift, no lateral brow lift, although I would like one or no regular brow lift,” she said. She’s never done threads, because she doesn’t think they work and she thinks it would also interfere with the facelift she plans on having in the future. She’s been tempted to have her eyebrows “snatched all the way. I want that look sometimes it seems fun and you can do it on a lunch break. I can see why it’s tempting.”
Fox says she has also never had buccal fat removal, liposuction or a BBL – although she does joke that in the future when you can have a BBL using donated fat she will be doing it. “I’ll never have any fat removed. I’m a very lean person who doesn’t have enough body fat or fat in my face, so I’ll only ever put fat in.”
Over the last few years, we have seen celebrities become increasingly open and transparent about their cosmetic work, with everyone from Kylie Jenner to Ariana Grande sharing the procedures they’ve done. On the surface, it seems like this new transparency is a good thing. In our current self-esteem crisis, many argue that believing celebrities or influencers look the way they do “naturally” or just through make-up and skincare causes people to feel worse about themselves, as they are unable to achieve the same results through those means. As Fox says on the podcast, she’s hoping that, by opening up about her experiences, it will set some people “free”.
However, what these reveals also do is help normalise cosmetic procedures and diminish their seriousness, turning injectables and “tweakments” into just another step in your beauty maintenance routine, like a manicure or getting your lashes done. Although Fox does talk about how undergoing surgery was a “big deal” for her and one which she doesn’t take “lightly” – “any surgery is a risk to your life” – the casual way she discusses brow lifts as something you can have done in a lunch break reveals how normalised these procedures have become. And the more these are discussed in this manner, the more normal – and expected – it becomes.
“Once we know someone’s done something, then it starts to open up a question of if we should as well,” Charlotte Markey, a professor of psychology specialising in body image at Rutgers University, told Dazed last year for an article exploring whether transparency around celebrity surgery actually makes us feel better. “The normativity and accessibility – particularly of non-invasive treatments like Botox and fillers nowadays – adds extra pressure to women to feel like it’s an ideal they should be reaching for.”
In the interview with Cooper, Fox mentions that she often gets cruel comments from people on social media who “[crucify her] for being plastic” and say that she “perpetuates an unhealthy standard of beauty”. However, while she talks about how she feels there is no way to “win”, she doesn’t go on to engage with this accusation that is being levelled against her and how she might be putting pressure on other women to have similar procedures done – without the celebrity bank account.
The price tag that comes with many of these procedures make them inaccessible to a large proportion of the population. In the US, lip filler averages between $500 to $1,000 per session while a breast augmentation starts from $8,000. As these surgeries and injectables become more normalised, it is becoming increasingly expensive for people to reach even a baseline standard of beauty and people are putting themselves at risk financially, sometimes going into debt, in order to participate. “The result is a benchmark for ‘beauty’ only reserved for those with disposable income, and a new beauty class system in which there are those who can afford to participate and those who cannot,” as writer Ellen Atlanta put it.
There might not be one right answer or route for discussing surgery and celebrity beauty practices, and it is undoubtedly a topic that we will continue to debate and disagree over for a long time. Ultimately, we will all have to decide how far we are willing to go when it comes to beauty and chasing an ever-moving target of what we are told is beautiful. Despite being considered one of the most beautiful women in the world, despite the thousands of dollars that have been spent on her appearance, Fox still gets distressed during the interview when she realises her make-up artist forgot to contour her nose. “I can’t believe I’m doing an interview without nose contour on, I’m traumatised you don’t understand what a big deal this is,” she says only half-jokingly.