Raven-Symone is getting real about the scrutiny she was under during the height of her fame in the early 2000s and how much it took a toll on her. On the Aug. 6 episode of her podcast The Best Podcast Ever with Raven & Miranda, the former Disney star revealed that she had two breast reductions, as well as liposuction, before she even turned 18. “There was paperwork involved,” she recalled, as she was a minor at the time. “My dad suggested strongly that I should have my breasts reduced.”
Body image issues plagued Raven before she made the decision to go under the knife. “He was like, ‘So you don’t feel bad, is there anything you want?'” she continued. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, if I get lipo, will people stop calling me fat?'”
Raven called the situation a “mess” and said there were even complications from her first breast reduction. She had a seizure after the procedure. “I remember waking up and seeing everything and then I just started to have this dry mouth and couldn’t breathe and went back under,” she shared. However, she added that she doesn’t remember much about the situation because she “disassociated” herself from the reality. Still, Raven said she doesn’t regret having the procedure because her breasts “grew back to not that big of a size.”
Over the years, Raven has been open about her struggles with body image. In 2022, she revealed that she had shed 40 pounds with her wife, Miranda Pearman-Maday’s, help on a no-sugar diet. Before that, she shared that she had lost 28 pounds in 2021. Raven also dished to HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY about the change at that time.
“It’s definitely an ongoing journey for me,” she shared in July 2021. “I set out to lose weight so I could be more healthy. But I didn’t set out with a visual idea of what to look like. When I get to a certain weight, I always find happiness with myself, whatever size I am.”