Catt Sadler, 48, got a facelift, calls it a step into my own power
The only thing I really know about Catt Sadler is that she walked away from her job as an E! News anchor because they wouldn’t pay her the same amount as her male co-star Jason Kennedy. They had the same job, but she was paid much less. She called out the network publicly, and it took guts to do that. Now she has a podcast with Dear Media, It Sure Is a Beautiful Day, where she interviews other celebrities and experts. It seems like transparency is Catt’s brand, because she’s sharing that she had three cosmetic surgeries: a facelift, a neck lift, and an eye lift. She posted to Instagram a video showing the process from beginning to end, including the bruising and swelling post surgery. Catt is also sharing why she had these surgeries done, which she says was to step into her own power.
Cosmetic surgery as a step into your own power: “What if we all told the truth? What if we allowed others to do what they feel is best for themselves?” Sadler captioned her video, which was distributed to followers through the text-based subscription service Scriber. Calling the three-week experience, a “life-altering” and “extraordinarily intense ride,” Sadler stated that the multiple procedures weren’t due to any insecurities about the way she looks.
“This wasn’t a ‘fix’ because of self-loathing but rather a step into my own power,” shared the podcaster, who frequently discusses issues for middle-aged women on her show, It Sure Is a Beautiful Day. “Love of self!”
She did it for herself: “It’s not like I did it because I can’t get a job,” she explained. “It’s not that I did it because I want my boyfriend to think I look 35. None of that was a consideration. It was more about looking in the mirror and feeling good. How I feel.” She went on to say that one of the “best parts about getting older is giving zero f—what people think of you”, particularly on social media where other public figures don’t disclose the cosmetic work they’ve had done to their faces and bodies.
She wanted an alternative to painful injectables: Sadler had gotten injectables before but wasn’t thrilled with the pain of getting fillers done. She didn’t initially go into her plastic surgeon’s office determined to get a facelift, and was even surprised that her physician recommended the procedure to remedy her “jowly sagginess” causing “pooling right around the lower half of my face and neck.”
Ultimately, she decided to follow through with the three procedures, and be entirely transparent with her followers about it.
First of all, kudos for Catt for being transparent. It’s painfully obvious to me that much much younger celebs have had facelifts recently and still insist that they had the same face as when they were sixteen. I’m kind of in two minds about it being a “step into power” though. I know that may seem counterintuitive since I often write about cosmetic treatments and procedures, and I’ve had lip injections and Botox. But I’m also conflicted about it. I guess I think two things can be true at once: it’s true that getting cosmetic enhancements can be empowering, and that cosmetic surgeries/enhancements usually help women conform to a male-gaze standard of beauty. The tension that comes with attempting to hold those two thoughts at once took me down a rabbit hole as I was reading Catt’s story.
I like the way I look more when I have a small amount of lip filler. And I know that men like the way I look, too. I’d get my injections even if men did not notice; but I’d also still be working towards achieving the same male-gaze ideal (young, feminine, etc etc), no matter my motivations. If these beauty standards did not exist, or if I lived in a world without men, would I still want to look like Pamela Anderson did on her first Playboy cover? Would I still spend money for someone to inject hyaluronic acid into my lips? Probably not. Sometimes I think that I think too hard about all of this stuff. But I have a lot of compassion for women in the public eye. We tear women down for aging, and then we tear them down for doing something about it. Ultimately what happens to Catt’s face is her choice. If getting these surgeries feels right for her, I support it, regardless of my complicated feelings about beauty standards. It’s cool that she’s being so open about the healing process, which is no joke. I also think she looks good–she still looks like herself.
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