Over the weekend, 27-year-old Modern Family star Reid Ewing published an article in The Huffington Post about his experiences with body dysmorphia, and how he underwent multiple cosmetic surgery procedures when he moved to Hollywood at 19.
As the responses to his piece came rolling in, Ewing then proceeded to come out in the most casual and hilarious way possible, while replying to a fan’s Tweet.
When the actor tweeted about the hotness of a guy in a Good Morning America segment, a fan asked if he’d just outed himself. “I was never in,” came the reply.
@MichaelJMapes I was never in
— Reid Ewing (@media_reid) November 21, 2015
Ewing later proved he knows his way around a gif. TBH it brings a tear to our eyes:
Writes a cosmetic surgery article, people care more that I’m gay.. pic.twitter.com/pwwTebw6qM
— Reid Ewing (@media_reid) November 23, 2015
In his article for The Huffington Post – which you can read here, and is well worth it – Ewing spoke about how his desire to look like Brad Pitt led him to experiment with multiple cosmetic surgery procedures:
“I told the doctor why I felt my face needed cosmetic surgery and told him I was an actor. He agreed that for my career it would be necessary to get cosmetic surgery. He quickly determined that large cheek implants would address the issues I had with my face, and a few weeks later I was on the operating table.”“I woke up screaming my head off from pain, with tears streaming down my face. The doctor kept telling me to calm down, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but scream, while he and his staff tried seemingly to hold back their laughter.”“Of the four doctors who worked on me, not one had mental health screenings in place for their patients, except for asking if I had a history of depression, which I said I did, and that was that.”“My history with eating disorders and the cases of obsessive compulsive disorder in my family never came up. None of the doctors suggested I consult a psychologist for what was clearly a psychological issue rather than a cosmetic one or warn me about the potential for addiction.”
He wrote about hiding out in Joshua Tree for two weeks after his initial surgery, terrified for anyone to see the results, and about the look of “bewilderment” on a police officer’s face when she pulled him over, leading him to lie and say he’d been in a car accident.
From the age of 20, he underwent multiple procedures, and says that none of the four doctors who worked on him offered anything like adequate mental health screening, or suggested he consult a psychologist for what was “clearly” a mental health problem.
Ewing said that he had had his “numerous” implants mostly removed by the time he began shooting Modern Family, but even in 2012, he still felt such insecurity that there was a six-month period when he was not comfortable with people looking at him.
He ended his Huffington Post piece by saying:
“Plastic surgery is not always a bad thing. It often helps people who actually need it for serious cases, but it’s a horrible hobby, and it will eat away at you until you have lost all self-esteem and joy. I wish I could go back and undo all the surgeries. Now I can see that I was fine to begin with and didn’t need the surgeries after all.”
Photo: Adam Taylor via Getty Images
