Heidi Montag, Before and After

Heidi first graced our television screens in 2005, when she had a minor role as a friend of Lauren Conrad’s on Laguna Beach. But it wasn’t until the following year, when she got cast in the spin-off The Hills, that her reality TV career took off. Back then, she was a 19-year-old fashion student who had moved to Los Angeles from small-town Colorado. With her blonde waves and barely-there makeup, she had the typical  “Cali girl” look of the mid-2000s.

By the end of the year, The Hills was one of the most popular shows on television—and the cast members became fodder for the tabloids and gossip columns. “It really got to me what people would say about me, and saying I had a horse face, and a Jay Leno chin,” said Heidi. “Just awful, really mean things about me... I kind of started believing it.”³

The Hills had only been on TV for one year when Heidi stepped out with a new look. Gone was the fresh-faced California girl—now, it was all about platinum hair, heavier makeup, and yes, a new nose. A month later, she confirmed that she did indeed get rhinoplasty and breast augmentation surgeries. “I’ve always been very insecure about my body... I have my dad’s nose, which is huge. It took up so much of my face, when I looked down, I could see my nose. I couldn’t get away from it! People would say, ‘You have such a big nose!’ And they’d make fun of me for being so flat... I was tormented.”⁴

The following year, she appeared on the cover of Maxim and released her first pop song (predictably, it flopped). Meanwhile, fans speculated that she was dabbling with lip fillers. Remember, this was long before they went mainstream courtesy of Kylie Jenner! 

According to her fellow cast member, Audrina Patridge, Heidi changed herself to please her soon-to-be husband, Spencer Pratt. “Spencer is always into these Playboy models, so I think that put a lot of pressure on Heidi. I think she felt pressure to look good and look like the ones he was lusting over.”⁵

In 2009, Heidi and Spencer (a.k.a. “Speidi”) co-authored a book, How to Be Famous, outlining their tips for achieving tabloid fame. They also took their antics to another reality show, I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, which led an NBC executive to call them “everything that’s wrong with America.”⁶

But Heidi still wasn’t satisfied with her appearance. Mere days after this photo was taken, she would undergo a gruelling 16 hours of invasive surgery from head to toe.

Before the operations, Heidi gave her plastic surgeon carte blanche. “I went in there... ‘What else could we do? If you had your dream person, what would you do to make me perfect?’ We went through all the list... I decided I wanted to do all the procedures.”³

On her face, they included a nose job revision, chin reduction, brow lift, neck liposuction and ear pinning—and this is the result. She also had fat injections in her cheeks, lips and nasolabial folds, as well as Botox. 

Although she was initially happy with her results, it didn’t take long for her to express regret, blaming the difficult and painful recovery process. “I don’t want to do that to my body again. I don’t want to get any more Botox or any more surgery, or any more lip injections. I think I’m fine the way I am.”³

Notice here that her nasal tip looks a lot more angular compared to 2010. After rhinoplasty, it can take about a year for the swelling to fully resolve and your nose to settle into its new shape. 

By 2013, she seemed to be embracing a more natural look, aside from the ever-present bleached blonde hair. Besides easing up on the makeup and self-tanner, she also downsized her breast implants that year. 

What I find interesting is how her brows have now dropped back into their original position. Before, the tails of her brows had been raised up by making incisions in her hairline. Did the brow lift just fail, or did she have it reversed?

At age 28, she elevated her red carpet aesthetic, trading fake tan and body shimmer for demure pink lips and sophisticated cat eyes. But that’s not what really stands out here—it’s her hairline. Is it just me or does the shape and texture seem unnatural? If you look at her earlier photos, she always had baby hairs. Now I’m wondering if she had them lasered off like Kim Kardashian.

Heidi took a break from the public eye after having her first child in 2017. But two years later, thanks to The Hills: New Beginnings, she was back in the spotlight. It was only then that she revealed she didn’t pay for all the surgery she had a decade earlier. “At the time I was just so impulsive, and I’m hearing like, ‘Oh, over $100,000 worth of surgery for free.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, great!’ I love a discount at a shoe store! All this free surgery and this amazing doctor? I thought that it would be really quick. I was so young and had so much going on that I didn’t stop and think about it.”⁷

That brings us to Heidi’s most recent public appearance, after The Hills: New Beginnings was cancelled (it ran for just two seasons). She was pregnant here, so if her face seems a little fuller, that’s the reason why. I’m just wondering if it accounts for her lips, which now seem bigger than ever! 

There’s no question that Heidi underwent a dramatic surgical transformation—but unlike most celebs, she has spoken freely about her procedures instead of denying them.

“A lot of girls my age get almost as much surgery, I would say, as me,” she said back in 2010. “All these celebrities have different faces. Nobody calls them out because they don’t talk about it.”³

In another interview, her husband also complained about celebs who pretend they haven’t had surgery. “You would rather us lie and deny that Heidi ever got plastic surgery? I would have loved to lie to everyone. All of these other celebrities get to do it all day long. Then everyone’s like, ‘Oh! What bra is it? So you just put the liner above the lip?’”⁸ (That’s a thinly veiled reference to Kylie Jenner’s lips, by the way.)

They do have a point, but the problem is, Heidi and Spencer are not the most reliable sources themselves.

In 2010, Heidi said she’d “been saving money for two years” to pay for her extensive surgeries, and that she’d been “always been very insecure” about her body.^2,4 But in 2019, she claimed that she didn’t pay at all, didn’t have self-confidence issues, and never would have had surgery if wasn’t free.

“If that didn’t happen, I would never have gotten anything. Like I wasn’t looking at offers and seeking it. And I actually was pretty confident in who I was, even though I always wanted that or just thought it was like no big deal.”⁸

As for future procedures, “I’m just starting,” Heidi said in 2009. “As you get older, there are so many different treatments.... Let’s just say there’s a lot of maintenance. Nobody ages perfectly, so I plan to keep using surgery to make me as perfect as I can be. Because, for me, the surgery is always so rewarding.”²

A year later, she swore off cosmetic procedures forever—even Botox and fillers.

I guess we’ll just have to wait for Speidi’s next move to see if she stays true to her word. Judging by her latest red carpet appearances, I suspect she has already changed her mind!