Valerie Bertinelli is getting candid about her body.
“I mean, if you read the book, you’ll know that my boobs are deformed,” Bertinelli, 65, said during a recent 92Y panel discussion, promoting her Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect memoir. “I talk very extensively and graphically about how deformed they are.”
She continued, “My boobs suck, but I’m not dating, so it doesn’t matter.”
Bertinelli explained that she had “four surgeries” in 2024 to remove the breast implants she initially got in the early 1980s.
“Mine were mocked relentlessly. They were called ‘little quarters,’ ‘itty-bitty titties,’ and ‘tiny boobies,” the actress wrote in her book about her decision to go under the knife. “I took it all to heart. Instead of appreciating the changes my body was going through, I dreaded them. I had no idea what I was supposed to look like; I only knew it was wrong.”
Bertinelli’s implants eventually ruptured, which she subsequently needed to have removed.
“I couldn’t believe they had been in my body. I went home bandaged and sore, with drains under my arms, uncomfortable but hopeful,” she recalled in a book passage. “For the first two weeks, everything was great. About a week later, my right breast took on shades of green, yellow, and blue. The next day it started to swell and turned a dark purple. I felt myself getting dizzy. By nighttime, I was running a fever.”
After developing an infection, Bertinelli had another surgery to install a “small implant under the muscle” to help restore “what was left of [her] nipple.” She said it took nearly a year for her breasts to take “shape.”
“They are now two completely different sizes; the implant on the left is over the muscle, and my right side is sad and misshapen,” she further wrote. “Eventually, I will have a fourth operation that will, I am assured, even things out once and for all.”
Elsewhere in Getting Naked, Bertinelli detailed her experience with other cosmetic procedures like Botox.
“I didn’t like it and had a mini freak-out when I saw it changed the shape of my eyebrows, which changed the shape of my face, which was a shock because my face is the way I recognize myself,” she wrote, revealing she got injections for the first time in 2019. “I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t want to see a puffy, distorted version of me in the mirror. I didn’t want to wake up and say, ‘Knock knock, is Val there?’”
Bertinelli continued, “Don’t get me wrong. I am not against plastic surgery or Botox and fillers. Some people look amazing when it works. They feel much better about themselves after a procedure. I get it — and I’ve been there.”
