Fonda: Facelifts were a mask to hide abuse
JANE Fonda says her long history of cosmetic surgery may have been a ‘mask’ to hide the sexual abuse she suffered as a child.
The 80-year-old film star, who has previously spoken of being raped, said that whenever she sees a woman who has had significant surgery, she wonders if it is linked to assault.
She said: ‘I feel very sad that so many girls are abused all over the world and that men don’t understand what it does to them. It’s not something that happens lightly – it can alter a person.
‘And then you have to be very intentional about getting back into your own skin. But it can be done.’
Over the years she had facelifts and Botox and once said that surgery bought her ‘a decade’ in Hollywood.
Linking plastic surgery to sexual abuse, she told the Observer Magazine yesterday that when she sees the face of ‘a woman who has made herself into a mask, I always think to myself … I wonder, I wonder’.
In 2006 she appeared to change her mind about surgery, telling an interviewer: ‘I’m going to try to organise other women in my profession and my friends to say “No” to the duck lips and getting rid of the wrinkles.’
However, four years later she revealed she’d had surgery on her chin, neck and under her eyes.
Last year she said she had been raped and suffered sexual abuse as a child and once lost a job because she wouldn’t sleep with her boss.
‘I always thought it was my fault – that I didn’t do or say the right thing. I know young girls who’ve been raped and didn’t even know it was rape. They think, “It must have been because I said no the wrong way.” ’