Sunny Hostin has spoken out about her cosmetic surgeries, revealing that she got a breast reduction and lift as well as liposuction.
During a recent interview with People, the 54-year-old discussed undergoing these surgeries last summer after struggling with back pain and body image issues. Along with the breast reduction and lift, Hostin noted that she got liposuction on her waist and chin.
“I feel like a better version of myself,” she said. “It was a health decision and a self-care decision.”
Breast reduction surgery “removes fat, breast tissue and skin from the breasts,” as noted by the Mayo Clinic, while liposuction consists of using “a suction technique to remove fat from specific areas of the body”.
Hostin told People how she first started feeling self-conscious about her body when she was a young girl and that by the age of 16, her bra size “was a double-D”. She noted that while she couldn’t “imagine” this happening, her breasts ended up getting “bigger with childbirth”. She’s the mother of two, Gabriel, 20 and Paloma, 16, whom she shares with her husband, Emmanuel Hostin.
She went on to confess that when she became a full-time host of The View in 2016, she became more concerned about how her clothes looked on her.
“My waist was small, but my top was so big I would wear a minimizer bra and a sports bra or a binder all the time,” she said. “Or I would get a very large dress, and then my stylist would put clips on the back of my dress so that everything would fit.”
Hostin then revealed that when she zipped up her dress for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April 2022, the bra didn’t fit, which left her “crying”. She also noted that once she got to the event, she was constantly worried about her breasts.
“I sat there and didn’t eat anything,” she said. “I couldn’t lift my hand because my boobs were going to fall out. [Musical group] Bell Biv DeVoe wanted to take a picture with me. I was like: ‘Oh God, they’re going to have these pictures of my boobs hanging out.’”
After that experience, Hostin said that she immediately booked an appointment with a plastic surgeon and breast specialist. She later had the cosmetic surgeries done on 22 August 2022.
The journalist went on to discuss her two-week-long recovery and how she hired a private nurse to help her with her drainage tubes, which prevented blood and fluid from building up.
“It’s not glamorous,” she said. “I was up and walking around in three days. I was back to work in two weeks, and I was doing Pilates in two months.”
Regarding how she’s doing post-surgeries, Hostin, who went from a G-cup bra size to a C-cup, said she’s feeling “great” and that she “prances around nude all the time at [her] house”. She noted that while some people may opt not to speak out about their cosmetic surgeries, she wanted to “be honest” about hers.
“I look through magazines and Instagram accounts. I always believed, ‘Oh, they must be clean eating.’ No, they’re not — a lot of them are taking something, or they’re getting plastic surgery,” she claimed. “It’s their decision to keep it private,” she adds. “But I wanted to be really honest. And I’m so happy.”
Hostin said that through sharing her “story,” she hopes to lessen the stigma surrounding cosmetic surgeries.
“I thought I would feel shame, like: ‘Oh my God, I’m doing plastic surgery like all these crazy celebrities.’ But I don’t feel shame at all,” she said. “And I hope sharing my story will help more people. If they’re feeling so body-conscious, the way I was — they can do what they need to do to feel better.”
Throughout the last three years, research has found that more people in the US have been looking into getting cosmetic surgeries. In a national poll conducted by The American Society of Plastic Surgeons in August, nearly 30 per cent of the surveyed surgeons said “their business has at least doubled,” when compared to the business they received before the pandemic.