Perhaps that’s why the public response to her disclosure has been overwhelmingly positive—celebratory, even. As a plastic surgery reporter who’s approaching 50, I was thrilled to see it—people commending Richards’ honesty, praising Dr. Talei’s surgical skills, and marveling at the time-machine-like results. Of course, I also scrolled upon the occasional “Why can’t we just be allowed to age naturally?” comment, which tends to turn up, in some form or another, on almost every plastic surgery post. The anti-interventionist who posed the question on Allure’s Instagram received a fair amount of pro-choice pushback from readers (242 of them at last look), including Richards herself, who replied: “I respect your opinion. I believe everyone has a choice and [can] do what’s best for them and for me this was best.”
There’s also been loud applause for the Richards-Talei collab from the plastic surgery community. Dr. Talei’s post featuring the star’s before-and-afters, along with a nuanced breakdown of her surgery, has racked up more than 222,000 likes and roughly 10,000 comments—many from big names in the field. Amongst the barrage of clapping-hands and fire emojis, one comment from Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Ashkan Ghavami, MD, garnered an inordinate amount of attention: Boss moves. My patients pretend like I don’t exist. 😂😂 How do you do it? 👏🏽
While made in jest, the remark effectively addressed the inexplicably youthful-looking elephant in the room. In recent years, plastic surgery confessions have increased among a certain echelon of stars (Ricki Lake shouting out her facelift surgeon, Kylie Jenner dropping the specs of her breast augmentation). The crème de la crème of Hollywood, however, still rarely acknowledge the work they’ve had done or the doctors behind it, notes Steven Teitelbaum, MD, a plastic surgeon in Santa Monica. Instead, they appear ageless on screens and red carpets but stay quiet, leaving us to wonder, or to suspend our disbelief and accept the falsehood that the rich and famous are impervious to wrinkles, jowls, and wattles. What’s the harm in that? Glad you asked. The harm is that their omissions are actively reshaping our beauty standards: Snatched 60-year-olds are starting to seem normal—a natural fixture in every drama we stream—but in reality, measuring up means having a surgeon on call.
