Column: Heidi Montag sends questionable message

By ChaToyya Sewell

Published Jan. 22, 2010

In a week in which we witnessed the trauma of a nation, Heidi Montag attempted a return to the media.

Her mildly triumphant return, after a three-month absence from the pop culture landscape, which, to be honest, I didn't really notice until it was snatched so cruelly back, was celebrated with a cover of People.

Montag is most famous for formerly being the first blonde sidekick on "The Hills" and for her and husband Spencer Pratt's fame-chasing antics.

She appeared on the cover as many celebrities do, showing off a new look. A look that little more than slightly resembled the fresh-faced Colorado teen of years before, a look that required 10 plastic surgery procedures administered in one day. Incredibly, this is not the first time Montag has gone under the knife. This is her second set of surgeries in three years, bringing her grand total to more than 12 procedures done on her 23-year-old person.

I'm uninterested in debating the merits of Montag's pre- and post-op faces. She looks different, definitely, but it is still a far cry from becoming one of those cat-women you see on health channel documentaries.

On “Good Morning America,” Montag defends her choices as a right to do what she pleases with her body (which some notable defenders, such as Janice Dickinson, re-iterated). And she is correct, but what messages are we sending and receiving that such drastic measures seem necessary at such a young age?

Montag places the impetus of her plastic surgery urges on two things: her low-self esteem after years of playground taunts and two seasons of being the quirky best friend and her "blossoming" music career.

As we all know, children can be cruel, horrid creatures, and as someone who was in on both the dishing and receiving of immature insults, it's true they can cut deep, and it might take the scars a while to fade. (Ask me about my teeth neuroses.) Add in the maturity level of adolescence, the anonymity of the Internet and the cutting culture of celebrity gossip blogs and the derision becomes that much more embarrassing and public. It is understandable that Montag's insecurities, which in another life might have been nurtured or neutered in private, grow large and looming, fed from the same pop culture machine that created her as a brand, a celebrity.

Case in point: In People, Montag brings up her chin, which was teased in adolescence, only to be branded as a Jay Leno chin on the Internet in adulthood. This same chin has been shaved to what Montag feels is perfection in two separate operations.

Montag also allocates causation to her dream of music stardom. Montag has a new album, entitled Superficial (irony?), being released shortly.

Good Morning America, whose interviewer took Montag to task about the risk, message and issues of her procedure quite a bit more than People's positive piece did, asked if the surgery was some kind of promotion of the album. Montag said no, it was just "God's timing."

And what does that say about us, the producers and consumers in cyclical pop culture land, when, to young women, the impression is that success is purchasable, when all is necessary is a modicum of debatable talent, a surgically symmetrical face and DDD breasts?

It's actually sad. Because somewhere underneath hair extensions, a fake tan, silicon and lip-gloss is Heidi Montag, a real woman. A woman who will exist when the Hills is canceled, when Superficial tanks, a woman who in her latest interviews Montag doesn't seem to like very much.