Renee Zellweger Addresses Plastic Surgery Speculation with Heartfelt Essay

When Renee Zellweger emerged back into the spotlight in 2014, people couldn't help but notice her seemingly altered appearance.

In the years that followed, Zellweger chose to remain silent when the topic of plastic surgery arose, but now she’s addressing the rumours and hopes her words will encourage change.

Over the weekend, Zellweger wrote a heartfelt essay for Huffington Post titled “We Can Do Better.”

Zellweger denies ever getting plastic surgery to alter her face before insisting whether or not she got surgery is beside the point.

“I’m writing because to be fair to myself, I must make some claim on the truths of my life, and because witnessing the transmutation of tabloid fodder from speculation to truth is deeply troubling."

“Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I did not make a decision to alter my face and have surgery on my eyes,” Renee wrote.

“This fact is of no true import to anyone at all, but that the possibility alone was discussed among respected journalists and became a public conversation is a disconcerting illustration of news/entertainment confusion and society’s fixation on physicality.”

The ‘eye surgery’ tabloid story itself did not matter, but it became the catalyst for my inclusion in subsequent legitimate news stories about self-acceptance and women succumbing to social pressure to look and age a certain way."

Nearing the end of the essay, she offered suggestions on what society should perhaps focus their thoughts on.

“Maybe we could talk more about why we seem to collectively share an appetite for witnessing people diminished and humiliated with attacks on appearance and character and how it impacts younger generations and struggles for equality, and about how legitimate news media have become vulnerable to news/entertainment ambiguity, which dangerously paves the way for worse fictions to flood the public consciousness to much greater consequence. Maybe we could talk more about our many true societal challenges and how we can do better.”

Visit Huffington Post to read the entire essay.