Goodbye Implants

In the movie business, your body is your business card. Which is why at age 22, aspiring actress Kari Wuhrer underwent breast implant surgery. Thirteen years later, she's had enough. In a Glamour Magazine exclusive, she shares her diary of rediscovering her real body --and real self.

Saturday, March 2, 2002

So far, this has been one of the most humiliating days of my life. This morning, I was standing in the dressing room of a movie set in a house in the Hollywood Hills, preparing for a nude scene for the film Spider's Web, and I was panicking. Not because it was a nude scene; I've done plenty of those. (I was naked in a room with Sean Penn and Jack Nicholson in The Crossing Guard in 1995 and didn't mind a bit.) No I was panicking because something was wrong with one of my breasts.

My right breast -- filled with one of my silicone breast implants -- had encapsulated, meaning that the scar tissue underneath the implant has turned rock hard and, in my case, is now pushing my right breast twice as high as my left. My doctor said it's the most common complication of breast implants, although it affects only about 5 percent of recipients. Unfortunately, I'm on the wrong side of the statistic. I'm half Pamela Anderson, half me. My right breast looks puffy and swollen, and the nipple is pointing downward. I look deformed.

Three weeks ago, when I began shooting this film, my breasts were fine. The encapsulation happened literally overnight. And because I was supposed to film a scene today that involved climbing out of a shower in a wet white shirt, I had to tell my director, Paul Levine, and my costar, Stephen Baldwin, about the encapsulation this morning. I may be the world's greatest avoider, but I couldn't get out of this one. I was so worried about their reactions: Would they fire me if I couldn't do the scene? Would they think I was just being a diva? Would they laugh? I mean, this wasn't a broken arm -- it was something really embarrassing.

Telling them was humbling. When they asked, "How bad is it?" I lifted my shirt to show them and then started to cry. How ironic: thousands of dollars of implants and I couldn't bear to have anyone look at them. But Paul and Stephen werre so compassionate. Paul said, "We'll work through the love scenes together," and Stephen agreed to help hide parts I couldn't expose. When I walked back to my dressing room, I cried even more with relief. I'd been thinking about getting my breast implants taken out for some time, but this was the last straw. All I could think was, I want them out -- now.

These implants have been with me for almost my whole entertainment career, After a yearlong stint in 1988 as the host of MTV's game show Remote Control, I moved from New York to Los Angeles to become a singer. An eminent record producer signed me to a record deal but added very matter-of-factly that I would need to get new breasts put in. He said, "I really like it when you can see a woman's breasts from the back." I can't believe that didn't halt me right there - the idea that I'd have such huge breasts that they'd peek out from my sides ! But I was young and more concerned with my looks than with what was on the inside, in my soul