Before going under the knife, the former 'Little House on the Prairie' star opens up in a lengthy blog post about her journey to self-confidence.
- Jan 8, 2015
AceShowbiz - Melissa Gilbert has gone under the knife to remove her breast implants. "In recovery. Surgery went great. No the recovery begins," the 50-year-old star recently tweeted. "#boobies!" Before the surgery, the former "Little House on the Prairie" actress blogged about her struggle with body image and her plastic surgery.
"I spent a great deal of my life almost completely flat chested," she said. "During the last few seasons of little house I was made to wear a padded bra." When she filmed "Splendor in the Grass," she recalled, the costume and makeup team put her "in a girdle, a corset, a padded bra and even painted cleavage" on her.
"This is our culture. It has been for a long, long time and I fell right into it. I believed that, not only would I work more, but people would love me more if I looked a certain way," she added. "Sad but true. My self-image was in the proverbial toilet."
However, the insecurity "didn't extend to [her] breasts" until after she stopped breastfeeding her son. "My husband [Bo Brinkman] at the time, referred to my boobs as......and I quote....'Socks full of marbles with knots at the top,' " she remembered. "I took his words to heart." They eventually divorced in 2012.
"And there I was, single and feeling enormously insecure about my breasts. Dating posed the terrifying prospect of the guy I chose to make love with next, undoing my bra and running away in abject terror," she said. "Then and there, without doing any research, I made the decision, to get my breasts augmented. Not too big, just enough to fill up the 'socks.' "
"I had spent most of my life pressured to look a certain way and I believed the hype. The height of this obsession with my outward appearance culminated with my appearance on the dancing show," she opened up, referring to her appearance on "Dancing with the Stars" in 2012. "It was all about spray tan and glitter and glamor and what other people think and being skinny, way too skinny!! Yuck!!"
She eventually got a boob job twice with the second one done after the birth of her second son. "But, something was nagging at me. I couldn't shake the idea that my implants had a shelf life," Melissa expressed her concerns.
Then, she got "a rude awakening" when a 300 pound patio cover collapsed on her. "The shallowness of my existence at that point brought me to my knees. I had to change. I had to look inward and address my issues," she said. "I had to focus on what was real and true. I'd lost myself somehow."
"Three years later, here I am...still changing....still growing. I am in a place where I am truly happy with myself. Sometimes I feel bad about my falling face and disappearing neck and I think I look like this; but most of the time, I'm really happy with the way I look. I'm enjoying aging. It's not going badly either.
