:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(959x12:961x14)/Danica-Patrick-3f367f7105674724bd2b253b1cc6ffd6.jpg)
Rhylee Gerber
The 37-year-old Below Deck star shared via her Instagram Stories in early August that she would be undergoing an "explant" procedure on Aug. 22 and documented her entire journey.
She added, "I'm so ready to start feeling 100 percent. I don't even remember what 100 percent feels like anymore."
On the morning of her big surgery, Gerber said, "I am tired of the inflammation. I am tired of the random, sharp pains ... and I'm tired of bloating for no f--- reason."
Danica Patrick
In April 2022, the former NASCAR driver said on Instagram that she "wasn't sure" if she was ready to share her experience, "but then I remembered that true vulnerability is sharing something you're not really ready to. So here it is."
Patrick explained that she got her breast implants in November of 2014, "because I want to have it all."
"I was really fit, but I didn't have boobs. So I got them. Everything went well, and I was happy with them."
In early 2018, though, Patrick started noticing her hair "was not as healthy and was breaking off," and she started gaining "a few pounds and had no luck losing it."
Her problems only increased from there, and in late 2020 "the wheels came off," Patrick said.
"I had cycle irregularity, gained more weight, my hair wasn't looking healthy at all and my face was a different shape (weird I know)," she said. "So I went down the rabbit hole to figure it out. I did every test that could be done."
Those symptoms led Patrick to have her implants removed.
"Within hours after surgery this is what I noticed — my face had more color and less dark circles (no food before the second pic), my face started producing oil again, I could take a 30% deeper breath into my chest already, and I had so much energy when I woke up (and surgery was at 2:30 p.m.)," she wrote alongside the photos at right.
Mena Suvari
The American Beauty star opened up about removing her breast implants in her new book The Great Peace: A Memoir, out July 2021. Explaining the decision, the actress said she felt compelled to make a change as she worked through the trauma of the past, including sexual and emotional abuse, having initially gotten the augmentation during that difficult time as a "distraction."
In the years that followed, "I would catch myself so many times realizing, 'I have these bags in my chest.' And I didn't have that connection as to why I truly did it. There was a lack of appreciation on my part," Suvari told PEOPLE of realizing she was unhappy with her body. "So I just sort of felt like, 'Who am I and what am I doing?' I had gone to this extent, to such extremes, looking for this identity."
Admitting she was nervous before the 3-hour procedure, the star said she felt free when she woke up and saw the implants on a side table as she was wheeled to the recovery room.
"Wow, there they are," Suvari recalled thinking. "It was wild. I put those in there."
Clare Crawley
The Bachelorette alumna revealed in July 2021 that she has plans to remove her breast implants after experiencing numerous health concerns over the years.
"I've been going through things medically with my body that I have not had answers to," she said on Instagram. "It's been hard, it's been frustrating and it's been scary for me to not have answers and to know something's not right."
Crawley said that she has privately suffered from a multitude of mystery symptoms in recent years, including an itchy rash on her upper body and elevated white blood cell count.
"My skin has been having really bad hives and rash. My whole body is just inflamed and itchy. I've had blood test after blood test. That is not my only symptom," she said. "It's so frustrating."
She said that recent mammograms and an ultrasound showed sacs of fluid behind her implants.
"As much as I love my implants, my body is fighting them and recognizes it as something obviously foreign in my body," she said.
Tamra Judge
The Real Housewives of Orange County alumna revealed on her Instagram Story in June 2021 that she's getting her breast implants removed in the coming weeks due to "autoimmune issues."
"Bye bye bye boobies," Judge wrote over a topless photo of herself, snapped at her pre-op appointment with longtime plastic surgery Dr. Milind Ambe, of Newport Surgical Center.
She aptly choosing the *NSYNC song "Bye Bye Bye" to play alongside the snap.
Judge went on to ask her followers to share their own explant stories, revealing in response to one follower that she's looking forward to getting her health back on track.
"I can't wait!" the mother four wrote. "Tired of being tired and inflamed."
Hayley Hubbard
The podcast host and wife of Florida Georgia Line's Tyler Hubbard had her breast implants removed in February 2021, and one month into her recovery she wanted to share her experience because "it seems to be a hot topic."
Hubbard explained that she wanted them removed out of concerns about the uptick in breast implant illnesses (BII), a newly emerging syndrome that is occurring in people with implants and can cause symptoms ranging from chronic fatigue to breathing problems to depression and hair loss, among others.
"I got mine removed because I had a textured gummy bear silicone implant, which they are not putting in people's bodies anymore," she said on her Instagram Story on Wednesday. "At the time when I got mine they were the latest, the greatest, the most natural ever. Now they're not. So that's why I was just like, I want to get them out."
"I don't know that I was feeling badly; I've been pregnant for three years, so it could've been a number of things," she added. "But, just the anxiety of having them in my body was not worth it, and I wanted a more natural look."
Kayla Lochte
The former Playboy model and wife of swimmer Ryan Lochte had been struggling with a long list of health problems for the past few years — everything from memory loss to depression, suicidal thoughts, bladder issues, swollen lymph nodes, vision issues and low libido — that led her to seek out help from multiple doctors in search of a cause. After a litany of tests, medications, treatments and therapy sessions, it became clear that she likely has BII, or breast implant illness, and needed to have her implants removed.
So on March 10, 2021, Lochte underwent successful surgery to remove her implants, though doctors discovered a worrying issue.
"Surgery went well," she told followers on her Instagram Story. "I wasn't able to keep my implants, I wanted to take them home with me, but they think that—well, both of them were deflated, one more than the other, so they think that they were possibly leaking inside of me, so they have to send them back to the manufacturer."
Lochte said that she immediately started to improve once her implants were out. Doctors noticed that the dark circles under her eyes were gone, and her skin tone quickly improved, "which is just so crazy," she said.
"It's insanity, how much it was affecting me and how sick they were making me," she shared, urging followers with implants who aren't feeling well to consider the procedure, too.
Ashley Tisdale
The High School Musical star opened up on Instagram in August 2020 about her decision to get her breast implants removed, citing "minor health issues that just were not adding up" such as "food sensitivities as well as gut issues … that I thought could be caused by my implants."
"So, last winter I decided to undergo implant removal," she explained.
"This journey has been one of growth, self discovery, self acceptance and most importantly self-love," she continued. "This picture above was taken two months after my explant surgery and I think you can tell just how happy I am to finally be fully me."
Melissa Rycroft
The Bachelor alumna is "officially a member of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee again," she wrote on Instagram. Rycroft announced on July 14, 2020, that she had her breast implants removed, sharing a photo of herself in the hospital after the surgery.
"Implants are OUT," she wrote.
She explained that after previously undergoing reconstructive surgery, one of her implants "refused to settle right (even after reconstruction)," so she decided it was time to take them out for good. "My body was telling me they didn't want these implants in!" the former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader said.
Chrissy Teigen
The cookbook author opened up to Glamour UK in March about getting breast implants when she was 20, sharing that she was motivated by her modeling career. "I thought, if I'm going to be posing, laid on my back, I want them to be perky! But then you have babies and they fill up with milk and deflate and now I am screwed." Teigen explained, "I had a quarter 'teardrop' cup in the bottom and filled out the breast line. But I want them out now."
Just two months later in May, the mother of two announced that she was following through on that decision. "I'm getting my boobs out!" she wrote on Instagram. "They've been great to me for many years but I'm just over it. I'd like to be able to zip a dress in my size, lay on my belly with pure comfort! No biggie!" she added. "So don't worry about me! All good. I'll still have boobs, they'll just be pure fat. Which is all a tit is in the first place. A dumb, miraculous bag of fat."
Ayesha Curry
In the cover story of Working Mother's June/July 2019 issue, the cookbook author opened up about making "a rash decision" to get a breast augmentation after welcoming her second child (daughter Ryan Carson, now 5) in order to combat "a bit of postpartum … [that] came in the form of me being depressed about my body."
She explained that her "intention was just to have them lifted" but she ultimately ended up "with these bigger boobs I didn't want."
"They're worse now than they were before," Curry said at the time, adding that while she "would never do anything like that again," she remains "an advocate" for other women to make their own choices about what works for them and their bodies.
In May 2019, Curry confirmed she'd had the implants removed.
Gisele Bündchen
After breastfeeding her two children for 18 months each, the supermodel decided to discreetly go under the knife to correct what she felt were smaller, uneven breasts than she had pre-baby.
"I was always praised for my body, and I felt like people had expectations from me that I couldn't deliver," Bündchen told PEOPLE. "I felt very vulnerable, because I can work out, I can eat healthy, but I can't change the fact that both of my kids enjoyed the left boob more than the right. All I wanted was for them to be even and for people to stop commenting on it."
But in her memoir, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, the supermodel said she instantly regretted the move.
"When I woke up, I was like, 'What have I done?' I felt like I was living in a body I didn't recognize," she said. "For the first year I wore [baggy] clothes because I felt uncomfortable."
Melissa Gilbert
The actress has gone natural! After removing her breast implants in 2015, a decision she deems "one of the smartest things I've ever done," Gilbert continued to stay on the natural track, eventually giving up on Botox and dyeing her hair, as well.
Her perspective on aging changed when she fell in love with her husband Timothy Busfield. "Through his inspiration I found the courage to just be me," she said. She decided to "age gracefully and appropriately and let my body and my face become whatever they are going to become."
Gilbert also had her implants removed because she worried about them leaking as she got older. "What am I going to do when I'm in my 80s and I have to have a hip replacement but I also have my breast implants replaced? Because it's inevitable, they have a life span. So I wanted them out."
Crystal Hefner
The wife of late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner underwent surgery in June 2016 to remove her eight-year-old breast implants after claiming they caused her aches, bladder pain, brain fog and fatigue. The model and deejay took to her Facebook page to explain her health status, which she said was deeply affected due to the implants that were "slowly poisoning her."
"Instantly, I noticed my neck and shoulder pain was gone and I could breathe much better," Hefner wrote following the implant removal procedure. "I know I won't feel 100 percent overnight. My implants took 8 years to make me this sick, so I know it will take time to feel better."
Kourtney Kardashian
The Kardashians are known for being open about almost every aspect of their lives, so it was no surprise when the eldest Kardashian sibling spoke about getting breast implants at age 22 on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. "I had my boobs done but if I could go back, I wouldn't have done it. I was so cute before," she told Showbiz Spy in 2011. "I've realized that I was made to look a certain way and I'm considering removing them."
Heidi Montag
After undergoing a staggering 10 plastic surgery procedures in one day and unveiling her new look in a 2010 issue of PEOPLE, The Hills star — who once described herself as "beyond obsessed" with fine-tuning her look — underwent breast augmentation three years later, downsizing from size F breasts to size D.
"I would never do it again and I never recommend it for anyone … I kind of wanted a few enhancements and then it got out of hand," she told Access Hollywood in 2012. "I wasn't told really the repercussions and what would happen, emotionally and psychically and the pain I would be in. I was kind of in shock."
Yolanda Hadid
As a vocal Lyme disease activist, Hadid used her celebrity on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to raise awareness of the invisible illness, as well as showcase her search for a cure. After discovering that her breast implants had been leaking, the mother of supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid made the decision to get the implants removed — citing a possible link to her ongoing health crisis. "We might have hit the jackpot by finding all this silicone from a 20 year old implant rupture through ultrasound mapping as shown in this selfie," she wrote on Instagram. "Thank you Dr. Feng for holding my hand and leading the way."
Pamela Anderson
Although the Baywatch star is known for her curvaceous figure, Anderson revealed getting breast implants was her No. 1 cosmetic regret.
"Not that we need to point it out," the actress said, rolling her eyes toward her chest in a 2016 interview with W. She famously underwent surgery to remove her implants in 1999; "It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time and I'm very happy with my decision," she shared following the procedure.
Tori Spelling
The actress and mother-of-five got candid about her breast implants in a 2011 interview with Good Morning America: "I got my boobs done in my early 20s, and if I had known it would or could possibly impact production of [breast] milk, I would never have had them done." Spelling would eventually get her implants removed following a doctor consultation in 2014, which was documented on her reality show, True Tori.
Victoria Beckham
While the former Spice Girl and current fashion designer is relatively private, Beckham didn't remain quiet when asked about her augmented bustline. "I don't have them anymore," she told Allure in 2014, after being shown an old photo of her that included ample décolletage. "I think I may have purchased them," she explained, adding: "Or they got removed, one or the other."
Heather Morris
What started out as a dream for the Glee alumna eventually turned into something she could no longer stand. "Implants were something I thought I wanted when I was younger, and now I don't," Heather told Fitness in 2011. "It was hard being active with them, because my chest was always sore. It hurt a lot, and I didn't like always being in pain, so they had to go!"
Karen McDougal
The former Playboy model originally decided to get breast implants in 1996 to boost her self-esteem, but seven years after getting her implants, McDougal started having thyroid and adrenal problems, developed severe allergies, and began getting sick constantly.
"I would get sick every couple of months and be sick for six to eight weeks at a time," she told PEOPLE. "It just never went away." The Arizona-based model would eventually attribute her symptoms to her breast implants, which led to her decision to get them removed.
"It took me 20 years to get 'poisoned,' so it's not going to be an overnight process," McDougal shared, adding that she immediately began feeling better after the surgery. "I still have to go through a detox process to get rid of all the toxins in my body, but it's definitely an improvement. I feel like I can actually live and enjoy life now."
Kimberly Holland
Holland, another former Playboy model, decided to get her breast implants removed after a friend of hers had her own bout with breast implant illness.
Holland initially got breast implants in 2004, but didn't experience any issues until she got them replaced with silicon "gummy bear" implants in 2012.
"I just wanted them out," Holland, who developed Raynaud's disease after getting her first set of implants replaced, told PEOPLE. "I didn't want to waste any more of my time or my health. There was no point in waiting. I have a son who's a toddler — I need to be around and be healthy."
ncG1vNJzZmiolaS9rbGNnKamZ5iarq3Ax2ianqSVl7%2BqwMieqmavmKR6s7HGq5ytZZeawbW1zaBkm6qVlsC1ecimp6WZnqnAcA%3D%3D