CBS personality Julie Chen never predicted that her plastic surgery reveal would become such a hot topic after she announced it on The Talk last week.
Since the Julie Chen plastic surgery admission, the web has been abuzz with reactions, many of which condemned her decision to go under the knife.
Chen addressed the controversy on the show yesterday.
"I wasn’t surprised that there would be haters judging me for what I did," she said. What was hurtful was that the hateful comments … from within my own community."
"It was comments like, ‘Way to give in to the Western standards of beauty.’ ‘You’re denying your heritage. You’re trying to look less Asian.’ Guess what?"
"I don’t look less Chinese! I’m not fooling anybody here."
Chen said that while most of her family members already knew about her cosmetic procedure, they didn’t know that it was private information.
"I got a phone call the next day after I revealed my secret, and it was a conference call from my sister and my cousin, and they were like, ‘Uh, that was your secret?"
"We’ve been telling our friends for years that you had plastic surgery.’ I was like, ‘Thanks!’" she recalled. "But I also got an email from another cousin."
"She’s much younger than me and she didn’t know. She was like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that was your secret.’ Because she was too young, you know."
Chen said that it’s also worth noting that she never would have considered getting the plastic surgery if she wasn’t a TV journalist by trade.
"I am sorry to hear some within my own community are still judging me and don’t agree with a decision I made for myself, which had nothing to do with denying my heritage."
"I want people to understand that there are Asians born with the crease I had surgically done to my eyes, so the goal was never to look less Asian."
The longtime Big Brother host added that "The goal was to look, in my opinion, more alert and more interested on camera for my work/career."
"The goal was to simply have bigger eyes so the camera didn’t make me look sleepy, bored, angry or disinterested in my interviews."