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Norwood Young On Overcoming Plastic Surgery Addiction

Posted by Quassan Castro on Tuesday, January 18, 2011

 

You may not know his name but you have probably seen his face.
And in his tell-all memoir, “Getting Back to My Me,” television star and singer, Norwood Young shares the painful past that led to self-mutilation. Young found success early, as his list of close friends grew to include many of Hollywood’s big names. Yet he still felt lacking.

After 15 years of surgeries that included four nose jobs, cheek implants, chin alteration, and more, Young stopped and had all of his procedures reversed. Heart & Soul caught up with transformed man to discuss how he learned to love himself again.

HEART & SOUL: Congrats on the release of your book, “Getting Back To My Me.” What sparked you to reverse your plastic surgeries and share your life experiences?

NORWOOD YOUNG: A guy wrote on a blog and that if his little boy ever saw me, he would cover his son’s eyes because I looked demonic and dark like a manufactured monster. I got angry. I was cursing. I looked inside the mirror and begin crying because I saw what he was seeing. Not that I am dark or demonic, but what I created was from that place.
I went back under the knife and got the plastic surgery reversed. I wanted to share my experience. I wanted to get back to my, “me” externally and internally. The book brought me closer to God.

Young, after 14 operations

HEART &SOUL: How was the process of having your operations reversed?

YOUNG: I had implants in my cheeks, so they got taken out. I had scar revisions reversed. The surgery team removed part of my cartilage out of my ribs, to build my nose back up. I had implants in my chin and those were removed also. I still have visible scars that I live with everyday. But I don’t hide the scars.

HEART &SOUL: You open up in the book on being abused and it leading to a desire for plastic surgery.

YOUNG: Upon being molested as a child I was being told that I was such a pretty boy, as if it was a bad thing. When I would hear those words again as an adult, I begin getting surgery to not look like me. I was in Hollywood and had the money for surgery. I didn’t want to hear the voices anymore.

HEART & SOUL: Do you feel there is a greater stigma attached to black men who undergo cosmetic surgery?

YOUNG: Yes. But we should mind our own business and let people live their lives. If you don’t like something about yourself and you are afforded the opportunity to change it, so you can live a better life, who am I to tell you what to do. Vanity and self-proclamation is what made me go back and redo all of my surgery because my spirit and my soul were feeling good.

HEART &SOUL: When you look in the mirror today, what do you say to yourself?

YOUNG: I love me. I’m ready to do what I was brought in the world to do.
http://www.heartandsoul.com/2011/01/norwood-young-on-overcoming-his-plastic-surgery-addiction/