At 58, Melissa Gilbert Opens Up About Botox: ‘You’re Literally Fighting Nature’
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Melissa Gilbert, 58, recalled the moment she decided to stop “fighting the aging process.”
She saw a picture of herself at a Hollywood premiere and didn’t recognize the person staring back who had Botox, fillers, and colored hair.
“I was looking at [myself] thinking, ‘Who’s that person? That’s not me. That’s like a shell over what the real me is,’” she said.
Today’s Melissa Gilbert—the one who dwells in an upstate New York cabin and just released her memoir, Back to the Prairie—is completely different from the version of herself who walked red carpets a little over 10 years ago. That’s because she decided to let herself age—a choice that was quite the protest in a culture where Botox and fillers were not just commonplace, but expected.
The Little House on the Prairie star admitted to Yahoo! Life that after moving on from child stardom, she got swept up in the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. And then one day, she saw a photo of herself at a premiere event and didn’t even recognize the person staring back.
“It was a red carpet for the Season 4 premiere of Nip/Tuck,” she recalled. “And I was all done up. And I, it was at the height of all the fillers in the Botox and my hair was very, very colored … And that really knocked me for a loop, because I was looking at [myself] thinking, ‘Who’s that person? That’s not me. That’s like a shell over what the real me is.’”
That artificial feeling stayed with her when she found herself competing on Dancing With the Stars in 2012. The sequined leotards and stage makeup only reassured her that something was off.
“I was having a real hard time living my life from a place where the external mattered more than the internal,” the 58-year-old said. “I really wanted to reverse that. I wanted to become more spiritual, more grounded, more at peace, more connected to my community, to my family, to my friends.”
So that’s exactly what she did. After marrying her now-husband actor Timothy Busfield in 2013, the pair moved away from Los Angeles so she could stop “fighting the aging process.”
“You’re literally fighting nature and I just don’t have the energy for it anymore,” she added.
After relocating to the Catskills, she connected with nature and reflected. It was then that Hollywood’s hyper-focus on women’s bodies—especially as they age—grew even more apparent to her.
“There are so many things we need to do to allow women to age. It’s so systemic and endemic and so much a part of the fabric of who we are,” she said.
That’s why she’s committed to fully existing in her natural form, to show young women that aging is not just an option, but a reward. “We need to provide examples for young women of what aging well looks like, and what being healthy looks like,” she explained. “Hopefully, I’m here to inspire other women to join this movement, to be who we are, and know that this is not only is this enough, it’s more than enough.”
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