Kylie Jenner is ready to talk a little more about her history with plastic surgery and how the public spotlight on her body since her teen years has affected her.
The reality star started by telling British Vogue that the commentary is part of what led her to get a boob job as a teenager, a procedure she regrets now. “That was 10 years ago now. Naturally you’re in such a different place,” she said.“The world put a lot of pressure on a teenager, me, to make the right decisions. And I just have to be gentle with myself because although I carried so much responsibility in the moment, I was just trying to do what was best for me. I was just trying my best as a human. I have to realize: ‘It’s OK, Kylie.’ Looking back, I’m like, ‘God, I was 17, 18.’”
She also used the interview to debunk speculation that she used Ozempic after her pregnancies. “I was 200 pounds when I gave birth to my 9-pound babies: 8.3 and 8.9,” she began. “I finally lost all the baby weight after my daughter and then got pregnant with my son two months later. And I felt in shape and it was working out, and then I got pregnant and did it all over again.”
“I feel like people didn’t give me, or give women in general, enough empathy. I see pictures [online] and people are accusing me of being on drugs or something…” Jenner continued, referring to Ozempic. Those accusations annoyed her, and she theorized those people forgot she’s just a young woman in her 20s. “I’m back at my weight I was before I had my daughter and son, and people are putting side by sides of me three months postpartum. I’m like: ‘Does everyone forget that I had two children and I gained 60 pounds both pregnancies?’”
She was privately struggling with her mental health too: Jenner suffered from postpartum depression after both her pregnancies. It took her a year to recover both times, she said: “I’m going to be 27, and I’m finally feeling like myself again, and [looking back] I think, being pregnant, I wore sweatpants every day, I didn’t have time to figure out even some of the little things in my life, and then postpartum lasted a year. Mentally, it’s really hard. Hormonally, it’s really hard. I didn’t know how to dress.”
Becoming a mother so young wasn’t planned, she shared, but Jenner credits her children, Stormi and Aire, as being anchors in her life. “No matter what I’m going through or what I look like or what the internet writes about me that day, I come home and my kids just love me unconditionally,” she said. “They’re just obsessed with me and that’s taught me to walk through life a little easier. I’m like, ‘OK, well I have these little humans at home that need me and love me and think I’m the most perfect person in the world, so I don’t really need validation from outside sources.’”
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.