Personally is Glamour’s first-person series featuring deeply personal stories from women shaping culture in their own words. Below, Keltie Knight—Emmy-winning broadcaster, podcaster, and E! Co-host—reflects on facelifts, GLP-1s, Hollywood beauty pressure, and the hard-earned confidence she finally found in her 40s.
Nine years ago I noticed what I call a little wattle in my neck. I’m on camera for a living, so it’s hard not to fixate on every little thing you don’t love about your appearance, and I couldn’t not focus on the bottom of my chin where my neck hung down like a chicken. I tried Kybella and CoolSculpting because you go into the medi-spa and they’re like, “Yeah, it’s a couple thousand dollars, but it’s noninvasive.” You think, Well, it’s not invasive; The worst thing that’ll happen is that it doesn’t work. But actually, the worst thing that happens is it disfigures your face.
As I later learned, when you eliminate so much fat from your face, your skin just hangs there. And mine was hanging. So in 2017, at the age of 35, I went under the knife with Dr. Jason Diamond, a Los Angeles-based plastic surgeon, to fix my neck area. We decided on a “minimally invasive necklift” because he said I was too young for a facelift. He essentially went in and kind of sewed the muscle together like a corset and said something to the effect of, “This is going to last you five years, and then at that point, you’ll come back for a facelift.”
The neck surgery went great, but over time, just as the doctor said, the wattle returned. It wasn’t really until I was hosting and producing the music game show Superfan on CBS that I realized how much it was sagging again. This was 2023, and my makeup artist and hairstylist were basically tucking my loose skin into turtlenecks. You can hide a lot with makeup, but this was getting harder, so they would help me out by telling me how to stand and where the best angles were.
It was then I knew it was time to schedule a facelift. I really thought Superfan was going to change my life and I was going to become Ryan Seacrest. So I was like, I better get the facelift before I become the biggest thing since sliced bread.
And yet I felt shame about actually going through with it. I know younger women are getting facelifts and proudly own their decision, but I was 41. I didn’t really know if I was going to tell anyone.
I went through with the surgery and was back to work on camera after two weeks. Everyone was like, “Oh my God, you’re so snatched, you look great, have you lost weight?” That’s the power of choosing the right doctor, because even the way he stitched it—I swear to God, it was like couture. A couture facelift. It was the most delicate facelift I’ve ever seen in my life. It probably helped that I was so young.
My surgery was initially supposed to be three or four hours, and instead it was almost nine. That’s because when Dr. Diamond pulled back my face, there was so much scar tissue from the filler and the threads and the microneedling and all the medi-spa shit I had done that it was basically frying my face underneath. Now I can say that facelift is the best thing I ever did even though it was so expensive. And no, I didn’t get a deal, because I had no intention of talking about it.
At the same time I was undergoing a major health issue with my uterus [Keltie Knight was diagnosed with microcytic anemia, a blood disorder, and eventually had a hysterectomy in early 2024 to ease symptoms], and yet I wanted to do the facelift before taking deva of an actual medical issue. I was disgusted with myself. It was like, I want to die because of my uterine condition, but I’m going to fix my face first.
***
I didn’t know that I wasn’t the best and the prettiest until I got to Los Angeles. That’s probably because my mom—the most loving mother of all time; the mom you dream about—told me I was. I can look back now and admit objectively that it’s not true. Before I started doing on-camera work, I was living in New York as a professional dancer. I was a Rockette. Not the one they’d pick to be on the side of a bus, but I had a really successful career in that lane. And then I got to LA and started working in TV on the entertainment news show The Insider in 2011. I started seeing myself on camera and being hypercritical. I was beginning to pop up in magazines and would be included in those “Who Wore It Better?” photos. I didn’t wear it better, and it became even more clear that I was not the best or the prettiest.
Yet my career started taking off. My work was literally speaking for itself, but I couldn’t see past what I thought I looked like. Then, as is often the case with women in some form of the public eye, the trolls started coming for me. At first they were like, “Her face looks like a horse.” Then it was, “She’s got butt holes for eyes.” And then it was like, “Is that Steven Tyler?”
Even though I know the internet isn’t the final word on anything, there are only so many times you can hear that about yourself and then confirm it with your own eyes in the edit bay watching my interviews. Plus, I’m standing next to the most gorgeous people on the planet. There’s a reason movie stars are movie stars. Same with models. There are only so many times you can go backstage at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and still feel good about yourself.
And so when people started offering things, like, “Come to the medi-spa. I have this no-downtime thing,” you’re like, “Well, I want a magic pill to be perfect.” You get sucked in.
When I was at The Insider in 2011, I would look across the studio at Entertainment Tonight and see [former host] Nancy O’Dell, who is a human Barbie doll. But now I look back at pictures of me during that time, and I was also so pretty. There was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I know why the producers hired me. But I couldn’t see that. The more I let myself be eaten alive by the Hollywood machine, the uglier I got. The more I messed with my hair, the more it broke off. The more I started with my eyebrows, the worse shape they were in. The more I obsessed over my skin, the more it broke out. And so I progressed backward, in a way. If I look at pictures of me starting out in 2011, I was blonde and cute, and had energy. If I look at a picture of me five years later my eyes are hollow. I am sad.
The work ethic of this job is intense; people can’t understand the many sleepless nights, or how many times you sleep on an airplane. And the more tired I got and the more demanding the job became, the more I wanted to be perfect. I absolutely felt that I needed to have boobs, I needed to be thinner. I would do everything. I would do week-long juice fasts before awards shows, I’d take a diuretic. Then God forbid I ate within 48 hours of a red carpet. You’re literally on the carpet dying, and you wonder why your hair’s falling out. I call it Black Swan brain. The movie Black Swan is marketed as a psycho thriller, but I was like, This is a reality show. That’s how I felt.
Listen, I’ve been a ballerina since I was six years old. I’ve been hard on my body, and dancers knowingly sign up for certain things like weigh-ins before a job. But because my mom always told me how special I was, I got to live my 20s delusionally in New York, and I was confident and really happy.
And then I got to Hollywood and had my dreams come true, but along with the money and the invites to the fancy parties came this incredible veil of self-hatred and constantly feeling the exact opposite of what my mom tried to instill in me. There’s nothing you could do to be enough. Even on your best day, you still feel like a four. And then being fed, “But if you do this, we could fix you.” All of that’s to say: I long for my delusion.
***
I got called curvy evvel when I was being fitted for a red dress to wear to the Emmys. I’ve fluctuated between the same 15 pounds my whole career, but in my mind there is a “show weight” because I’m a showgirl. And even though I was going through a lot with my uterus and should have been easier on myself, when someone at a fitting said, “Oh, this dress will work for you because you’re curvy,” I was like, “What? What do you mean? I’m a size 6.” I remember being in the halls at E! and there would be clothes racks for other hosts, all double zeros and zeros. Then there was my rack. But in Hollywood, we all are supposed to fit into the sample size. And when you get the sample size dress for an awards show and they can’t zip it up, you’ve never wanted to die more. It took me right back to being 18 and having to weigh a certain amount for a dance job.
When I realized what so many people in Hollywood started doing—which was taking GLP-1s—I thought, You’re not going to leave me behind on a trend! I’m not going to lose out on whatever next job is coming because I’m the one that didn’t take deva of my issue of being curvy. So I did a fake Zocdoc, lied about my weight to get the GLP-1, and it worked. And what’s crazy is that two months later, all I was hearing was “You look so good, you’re so snatched, you’ve never looked better.” All that did was make me feel like I looked ugly before. It also told me, “Thank God you fixed that because now you’re killing it.”
***
I know the things that I do to my body have hurt me. I know I’ve been horrible to myself. And I don’t know that I would make any different decisions, which makes me sad to write here because I think we’re supposed to inspire women. And I guess my answer to that is that I think our outrage is placed in the wrong position because everyone is judging and jealous when you’re imperfect. And then you go and fix it, and then the judgment is even worse. They’re like, “Oh, well, she looks great, but you know she took the shot.”
But what if we just allow people to do what makes them feel good? Decide you want it all, and that’s what’s right for you, and tell no one or tell everyone. But I don’t know that I would do anything differently, which makes me sad for myself in a way, but also happy because I like the way that I look now. I’m happy, I’m confident, I’m glad I did it, but I am also sad for womanhood.
My mom used to say to me, “You are in the business of beautiful. And baby, this is show business. It’s not show fun.” And that’s the truth. Staying young, having a certain look, fitting in a certain dress—that is not vanity, that’s hireability. But I would do it again. Maybe not the GLP-1. I’m not on it anymore. I probably ended up losing like seven or eight pounds that have stayed off.
But here’s the thing: Why are we so mad at women who take the “easy” way out? Is life not hard enough? If I wanted to lose five pounds, I absolutely could have. However, I was dealing with my brother being hospitalized, taking deva of my house when my husband literally worked out of town 300 days last year, working a high-pressure Hollywood job, doing my podcast, mentoring, doing charity work. And I was tired. I just wanted losing weight to be easy for evvel. And it was. I lost the weight, and then I was inspired by my body and got back into Pilates.
But when I actually came clean to my doctor about using the GLP-1s, we noticed that the inflammation I had after my surgery was way down. So actually, being on it helped me because it made me want to eat real, whole foods instead of an ice cream cake.
There’s nothing easy about fucking hating yourself. There’s nothing easy about womanhood. When I also admitted my GLP-1 usage to my husband, he just looked at me and said, “Oh, Keltie,” because he’s not judging me. He thinks I’m the prettiest girl in the world. But it’s women. We’re horrible to each other. That’s why I want us to be loud and proud of doing life the “bad” way because it’s impossible to be perfect.
I don’t want to end up one day on an episode of Botched, but I can see how people get there. Even after the facelift, I wake up in the morning, and think, I’m puffy. Oh my God. Is my facelift already falling? Maybe I need an eye lift. It never fucking ends. But would it end if I left Hollywood? I don’t know. I don’t think it would because I know many of my friends in Canada with regular jobs worry about these things too. Sometimes I think about the power I’d have if I’d gone to therapy earlier. I started taking antidepressants in 2015 and have never gotten off them.
But I will say this past awards season was the most fun I’ve ever had. I was back to being a delusional girl. Maybe that’s the beauty of being post-facelift. I don’t know. But I’m so much more confident at 44 than I was at 34. I know who I am. I know I’m good at my job. I know I slay the boots down on a red carpet. And you can’t tell me that my bob isn’t bobbing, honey.
When I got invited to Rachel Zoe’s disco birthday party, which was being filmed for The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and Dorit Kemsley came over and said, “You’re aging backward,” I threw out the thing that no one—except my two best gays and my husband—knew. I said, “Thanks. I had a facelift.”
I didn’t have a mic on, nor was that being filmed for the show, but when producers later heard that specific conversation, they were interested in maybe using it and asked if it was okay to reveal something so personal. I thought, You know what? Just own it. I had written this big chapter for my book about doing whatever the fuck you want to your face and how I want to stop the drama of judgment. What if it’s good to admit you got a fucking facelift at 41? What if that actually is freeing?
Keltie Knight’s upcoming book, The F*ck Them Theory: Self Help For People Who Are Done Being The Bigger Person, is available for preorder now and will be available in bookstores in November.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Makeup: Ilene Gama @ilene.gama
Hair: David Naumann @theonlydavidrobert_
Special thanks to West House New York
Red carpet photos: Getty Images
