New year, new Camille Grammer!
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum spoke with PEOPLE in an exclusive interview about her recent breast implant removal surgery after announcing it in an Instagram post on Jan. 2.
“I don’t want to be defined by my implants,” Grammer said. “Let’s be honest, you do get judged. This is not me anymore, I’m not going to be defined by this.”
Grammer got her first implants in her early 20s because “it was a popular thing amongst little starlets,” Grammer said. “For me, it was an aesthetic choice, I didn’t need them. I had a full B. It was just a look I was going for, following a trend.”
However, Grammer admits she wasn’t educated on the long-term maintenance the trend required and has since undergone three breast implant surgeries, which included some repercussions.
Sixteen years ago, Grammer debated getting her implants completely removed, but she said she was concerned about the scarring, which detracted from her decision. Instead, she opted for a replacement. She came out of that surgery with slightly larger breasts than she had hoped.
“They were so big and I didn’t know, I was very naive,” Grammer said about feeling disappointed immediately following her second surgery. “I would’ve been fine removing them, like I said 16 years ago, I would’ve been absolutely fine.”
Grammer also said her second set of implants ruptured and the silicone made its way to her lymph node. “It got absorbed by my lymph node under my left armpit. I have to get that checked every year that I go for scans,” she said.
“I’m maturing and this is not the look for me,” Grammer, now 56, said.
Since undergoing a hysterectomy and having a history of stage 2 uterine cancer, Grammer said, “At my age, it’s best to air on the side of caution and make smart decisions for my health.”
“Also there’s a bit of shame that comes with it,” Grammer confessed. “Having them and it being so obvious and trying to hide them at times around women and people.”
While some women with breast implants try to show off their additions, Grammer said it was different for her. “For me, in certain situations, I found myself rolling my shoulders forward, to kind of hide my chest not to promote it,” she said.
The weight of the implants led to tremendous back and neck pain.
“Going through menopause my breasts were getting bigger and bigger naturally,” Grammer told PEOPLE. “I said to my husband, ‘This is ridiculous, I’m over it. I can’t, I can’t deal with this anymore.’ ”
“I just wanted to be free from this weight of my upper body,” Grammer said with a chuckle. “I feel liberated in a way.”
“New Year, new look,” Grammer captioned the bikini pic last month on Instagram. “I was over the look of my implants and wanted the natural look. I feel much better without them.”
Grammer thanked her Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, Dr. Robert Cohen, for the surgery.
“The thought of going through another surgery from 55/56 to 65/67, I couldn’t do this again,” Grammer told PEOPLE with a laugh. “Dr. Cohen gave me options and there are options out there.”
With permission from Grammer, PEOPLE spoke with Dr. Cohen, a certified plastic surgeon specializing in esthetic surgery in the breast and body. Dr. Cohen has offices in Beverly Hills, Calif. and Scottsdale, Ariz.
By the time Dr. Cohen saw Grammer, she was experiencing several issues leading to increased discomfort, he said.
“She’s having a lot of back and neck discomfort from the weight of the breast and the way the breasts were pulling on her chest,” Dr. Cohen told PEOPLE. “The second issue that she was having was just sort of a very unnatural appearance because she had what’s called caps, or contracture, where you get scar hardening around the implants, which causes distortion. And then lastly, they just weren’t beyond just the distortion. They were just bigger than she needed. They weren’t proportionate to her body.”
When Grammer came to him, “she wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do.”
“I recommended to her that I didn’t think she needed implants at all anymore,” Dr. Cohen said. “I thought she had enough natural breast tissue in combination with some fat grafting. But I felt like we could do a reconstruction without needing implants. And once I talked about that, she really liked that idea, because just getting rid of the foreign body, she felt it be sort of like a healthier situation for her lower maintenance.”
In October, Dr. Cohen took out the implants, placing Grammer under local anesthesia for the procedure. A month later, he conducted the follow-up surgery, in which he removed scar tissue, repositioned the breast anatomy, conducted a full breast lift and borrowed fat from unwanted areas for the grafting.
“So we went from a very sort of unnatural kind of, you know, ’90s style breast to like a much more like, kind of esthetic, natural breasts of the current era,” Dr. Cohen said about the finished procedure. “So for her, is a very slimming effect, because she’s in great shape.”
“As you can see in these current photos that she just posted, she looks amazing and she’s quite a bit smaller, but it’s smaller in a very like, healthy, natural kind of way. So I think the era of like the big, big breasts and the big buttocks and the big everything, like these exaggerated, overdone kind of looks, we’re sort of, thankfully getting past that.”
Comments began pouring in offering support for Grammer’s recent removal. The Real Housewives of Orange County alum Gretchen Rossi wrote, “Omg so amazing love! You look great.”
“Amazing, it was the best thing I ever did,” one person wrote. “Got mine out years ago and never regretted it!! Happy New Year!” another added.
Grammer encourages women looking to replace their existing implants, “I would tell them to think about it, research it, education is key, don’t go into this blind. It’s your body you should know what’s going on when you get them and you have options when you remove them,” she told PEOPLE.
As for young women who are looking at implants, Grammer said, “It’s very good to educate them to know that you have to go through maintenance that is every 10-12 years to replace the implant.”
“I think smaller natural is the way to go, just personally,” Grammer continued. “I would never allow my daughter to get implants.”
Additional reporting by Lawrence Yee.
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