Amber Tamblyn has opened up about getting her ears pinned as a 12-year-old child star.
“As a little girl, I had ears that stuck out like butterfly wings,” the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants star wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times, published on Saturday, October 20. “Some kids at my school in Los Angeles would make fun of them, and I’d often stare at myself in the mirror wishing my ears would lay flat against my head.”
Tamblyn, now 41, wrote candidly about her decision to undergo plastic surgery at 12 years old, saying she was influenced to do so after landing her breakout role as Emily Bowen on General Hospital in 1995. She went on to play the character until 2001.
“I opted to undergo ear-pinning surgery, a decision I’ve never made public until now,” Tamblyn wrote. “For years, my parents watched my struggle with private shame, though they understood I was a tough kid who could handle it. But once I knew millions of people all over the world would be judging me on their television screens, not just on a playground, that knowledge changed everything for me.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, ear pinning, a type of otoplasty, is a cosmetic procedure done by a plastic surgeon that “permanently draws ears closer” to a person’s head, “minimizing ears that stick out and correcting imbalance or asymmetry.”
Tamblyn explained how she struggled internally with this choice, describing herself as “a fiery young feminist” who “raged against the patriarchy” and, at that age, felt like “a hypocrite who gave into it” for getting the elective surgery.
“How could anyone not?” she wrote. “Going under the knife felt like choosing a weapon I could wield in self-defense against my own disposability. It showed the world that I understood the assignment of assimilation — that I could do whatever it took to fit in, never stand out, the way my ears once did.”
The Joan of Arcadia alum also praised director Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror film The Substance, which stars Demi Moore as an aging actress who uses a new drug to transform into a younger version of herself (played by Margaret Qualley).
It’s often thought that celebrities who’ve had plastic surgery will go to any lengths to hide their secret, but stars from Ronnie Ortiz-Magro to Courteney Cox have been candid about their experiences going under the knife. Some celebrities have even shared their plastic surgery nightmares. Heidi Montag, for example, developed health problems due to her […]
“It’s a powerful shared experience,” Moore, 61, said of the film during a September 2024 appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “It’s dealing with aging and the male perspective of the idealized woman that women have bought into.”
Tamblyn, for her part, found the film reflective of her own experience as a “child actress in the sexualized spotlight of the entertainment industry.”
“Over three decades, my responsibility not just to my craft of performing but to the performance of youthfulness was reinforced constantly,” Tamblyn wrote. “This kind of warped thinking has become the status quo — and women can become our own worst adversaries.”
She noted, “Would I be less happy if I had fought against the desire to get my ears pinned back, if they still stuck out today? I don’t know — but I do think about it often, and about my willingness to align myself with the industry’s expectations.”
