Rosie O’Donnell shared a flabbergasting set of before-and-after photos showing the effects of a facelift she underwent in January.
The 64-year-old actress agonized over the decision to have the ‘shameful’ procedure, which she regarded as a ‘betrayal of feminism.’
She bit the bullet and forked over more than ‘I have ever paid for a car,’ only to emerge from surgery and realize nobody noticed the difference anyway.
O’Donnell rationalized the result as ‘the best possible outcome’ when she went public with the operation Monday in bizarre, freewheeling blank verse on her Substack.
‘I didn’t disappear, I didn’t become someone else – I just stopped arguing with the mirror,’ she wrote. ‘And maybe that’s enough. Or at the very least…it’s what a lower deep plane face lift looks like when it minds its own business.’
As her disclosure went viral, she posted ‘THE B4 & AFTER’ to Instagram Wednesday, allowing fans to make their own determination as to how much had changed.
Rosie O’Donnell shared a flabbergasting set of before (left)-and-after (right) photos showing the effects of a facelift she underwent in January
She had explained on Monday that she once harbored a strident moral objection to facelifts and ‘assigned myself as head of all women who would never’ get one, as they were a ‘betrayal’ both of ‘feminism’ and of ‘aging.’
However O’Donnell found her position on the issue softening when she shed 50lb and discovered that her skin had begun to sag as a result.
‘It wasn’t wrinkles – it was gravity,’ wrote the former The View anchor. ‘I’d look in the mirror and think – this isn’t aging, this is melting with intention.’
O’Donnell confessed: ‘I tried to be evolved about it. and say things like: “This is natural. This is earned.” And then… “umm how earned does it have to look?” There’s a point where acceptance starts to feel like lying.’
The A League Of Their Own actress, who left America and decamped to Ireland to avoid living under the second Trump presidency, started looking into the procedure.
However she then had to deal with strenuous opposition from her 13-year-old daughter Clay, who ‘was not subtle’ about her feelings.
Clay’s arguments against the facelift were: ‘You earned your wrinkles,’ ‘Young women look up to you,’ and: ‘I wouldn’t be able to respect you if you did it.’
She reminded O’Donnell of her own ‘younger, more certain, more morally rigid self’ and successfully delayed her in getting the procedure for months.
The 64-year-old is pictured last October in Sydney, three months before she underwent a procedure that has had such imperceptible results ‘no one has noticed’ she had it
While mulling the prospect of a facelift, she had to deal with strenuous opposition from her 13-year-old daughter Clay, who ‘was not subtle’ about her feelings
The A League Of Their Own actress left America and decamped to Ireland to avoid living under the second Trump presidency; Trump is pictured at Fort Bragg in February
O’Donnell is pictured in 1996 on the hit talk show that helped make her a household name and established her erstwhile reputation as the ‘Queen of Nice’
However O’Donnell ultimately persuaded herself she did not want to teach her children that ‘my body belongs to an idea either. Even a good idea. Even feminism.’
Overcoming her misgivings and steeling herself, she paid a price higher than that of any car she ever purchased and went in for the operation.
She remembered that ‘right before I went under, I grabbed my doctors hand and said: “I will never say: ‘God, I wish you did more.'” And I meant it.’
The surgeon appeared to have taken her guidance seriously enough that ‘no one has noticed’ she procured the lift. ‘Not one person. Not a friend, not a stranger, not even people who owe me compliments My teenager has not said a word. Nothing.’
O’Donnell has four adult children – Parker, 31, Chelsea, 28, Blake, 26, and Vivienne, 23 – who presumably also failed to detect the tweaks to their mother’s face.
‘I went through a full existential feminist crisis, had my face and neck surgically altered, and the result is… zippo,’ she marveled.
The facelift comes a half-decade after she insisted she would never acquire one on the grounds that it would prevent her from getting the parts she wanted.
‘I always knew as an actress that when I got into my 60s, I would be playing the Geraldine Page roles,’ she shared with Vulture.
‘I wasn’t going to have plastic surgery. I was going to look the way a woman my age should look, and I always thought that would be a blessing in my older age. I would get to play the Colleen Dewhurst roles. That has turned out to be true. I’m getting all this acting work now that I’m closing in on 60.’
