Extreme Makeover at 23: Reality TV Star Heidi Montag Shows Off Her New Look in People

On November 20, 2009 Heidi Montag spent 10 hours getting a series of cosmetic surgery procedures, including increasing her breast implants to a DDD, getting “sexy ears”, and arching her brow, which Dr. Frank Ryan, her plastic surgeon, admits “isn’t commonly done” to 23-year-olds. In the accompanying 7-page interview, Heidi explains that she wanted to get the operations because her dream is to become a pop star and “it’s a superficial industry.”

Though People asking, “has she gone too far?” on the cover, suggests that there’s some kind of discussion about the dangers of plastic surgery in the magazine, Heidi is basically allowed to spew comments about how surgery was the answer to all of her body image issues. Even magazines like In Touch and Life & Style will usually consult with a “doctor who doesn’t treat the star” and tack on several paragraphs cautioning against becoming addicted to altering your appearance.

People only cites two doctors in its piece. Dr. Ryan justifies operating on Heidi, saying, “She’s doing what every other celebrity does… They just don’t talk about it.” The second doctor gets in six words in a sidebar on the last page. In the only challenge to Heidi advocating going under the knife, the magazine points out that about 5 to 10 percent of people who get cosmetic surgery have body dysmorphic disorder, a condition in which people look normal, “‘but they see a distorted image,’ says Jamie Feusner M.D., a psychiatrist who heads UCLA’s BDD Research Program.”

Yesterday actress Emmy Rossum Tweeted about Heidi’s cover,

It upsets me to see young women in the spotlight advocating plastic surgery. ANY surgery is extremely dangerous&should not be taken lightly, ..much less, used as a tool to increase notoriety or popularity… By putting this on magazine covers, we are somehow legitimizing the dangerous lengths to which some will go for fame and “beauty”

Judging from the public reaction to the songs Heidi has already released, it seems unlikely that her new appearance will catapult her to pop music stardom. However as Rossum points out, the surgery has already allowed her to increase her notoriety by appearing on the cover of People, while just recently she had a hard time getting on the cover of one of the far less legitimate celebrity weeklies.

Heidi already wants another procedure to make her breasts even bigger because when she posed for Playboy, “I didn’t fill out one of the bras and they had to Photoshop my boobs bigger and it was disheartening.” She says this is just the beginning of what she wants to have done and, “I plan to keep using surgery to make me as perfect as I can be.”