Media Project: Heidi Montag

Heidi Montag, a self-proclaimed Christian from Crested Butte, Colorado, moved to Los Angeles with the hopes of starting up a career in singing and acting. As many women before her have done, she fell prey to the high pressures that come along with a life in the spotlight. Consequently, Heidi’s inferiority complex is only natural, based on the complicated nature of today’s society and the enormous impact that media has on female celebrities. Unfortunately, Heidi gave in to the pressures she faced and soon embodied, literally, the idea that in order to be successful she must look like everyone else; unnaturally perfect. The life that Heidi Montag has created for herself once she entered Hollywood is the perfect example of Levy’s idea of “raunch culture”, in the most extreme form; although Heidi is not showing her breasts to large groups of drunken men like the girls on Girls Gone Wild, she has completely altered her exterior so as to “look the part”.

According to Heidi, she never felt good enough in Hollywood, and was constantly harassed in the tabloids because of her “Jay Leno chin”, small breasts, and bigger ears. She gave in and had her initial plastic surgery procedure, a breast enhancement, and soon after posed for Playboy, immediately objectifying herself once she felt comfortable enough with her bigger breasts. By turning herself into a sex object, Heidi made herself very much a part of Levy’s “raunch culture”. Levy states that “Raunch culture, then, isn’t an entertainment option, it’s a litmus test of female uptightness” (40). Heidi fell prey to the idea that the next step she needed to take in order to be successful was pose for Playboy, and if she didn’t, she would be the good Christian girl with big boobs who wouldn’t show her body to the world. Heidi clearly felt the need to be in Playboy simply because of the demands that the media and the world of Hollywood places on young celebrities.

Recently, Heidi went under the knife for the second time, except this time she had ten elective procedures done in ten hours; may I add that she is only 23 years old? As absurd as that sounds, it’s even more absurd when one sees the changes she made! There is no doubt in my mind that she should have stayed the way she was before because now she looks like a freaky alien. She stated, “I feel very plastic”-duh! Levy states that “hotness has become our cultural currency, and a lot of people spend a lot of time and a lot of regular, green currency trying to acquire it” (31). Clearly, Heidi spent A LOT of green currency acquiring “hotness”, and the sad thing is that most people would say that she did not even achieve that goal. Heidi played into the raunch culture with the intention of helping her career, being successful, and feeling “prettier” and she just took it to such an extreme place. Her family, Spencer, and the world as a whole, hate mail and all, are seriously opposed to what she has done to herself but Heidi is stuck in Heidi’s little world where all she can see is her inferiority; nothing is ever going to be good enough-she still wants more surgery!

One aspect of Heidi that makes her especially intriguing is how she always makes a point to call attention to her good Christian values. What I find interesting about it though is how she uses her belief in God and Christianity to lessen the severity of the “raunchy” things that she does; pose for Playboy, have ten plastic surgery procedures in one day, etc. As viewers, it is so completely obvious how transparent her story is. Heidi stated in an interview with Billy Bush from Access Hollywood, “Or maybe God gave me extra because he knew what I would be doing and the career, and blessing me with such a great doctor”, in response to Billy’s proposal that she has rejected God’s gift of her natural body. Sorry Heidi, but you cannot use God to justify your rash and poor decisions. Because she almost died after the surgery, she believes she has undergone a "spiritual transformation" in addition to a physical one. She claims that she is an “upgraded” version of her former self and many believe she is an enormous hypocrite, as she believes that “beauty lies within”. OKAY HEIDI, how can that be possible if you just changed your entire body, through and through, to look like an unnatural and almost frightening version of yourself? In relation to Levy’s ideas, she states that, “Sexiness is no longer just about being arousing or alluring, it’s about being worthwhile” (31). Heidi had no concept of the impact her beauty had on the world and felt that in order for herself to be “worthwhile” in this world, she had to alter her appearance so drastically to get some type of a reaction. Sadly, she succeeded in that aspect of it all. Whether this hype will pan out for her is another issue all together though.

Heidi claims that she did not have her ten plastic surgery procedures for her upcoming album that recently debuted, to dismal numbers might I add. “It was all God’s timing”, she says. I sincerely doubt it was “God’s timing” as she knew exactly when her album was coming out and elected to have the procedures at the same time. The whole situation is extremely saddening to me as well as many others in the world. It all comes back to Levy’s idea that “somehow, we have accepted as fact the myth that sexiness needs to be something divorced from the everyday experience of being ourselves” (44), which Heidi could not embody more. She is no longer herself because she has fallen into the trap of this idea. The media industry, the patriarchy of today’s society, all of these parts of our lives have resulted in women like Heidi Montag going so far so as to feel like she is good enough and worthy of people’s time and attention. I believe that Ariel Levy would agree that the situation of Heidi Montag is surely a part of today’s raunch culture, just a slightly different spin on it. I’ll leave you all with this: the title of Heidi’s new album is called, Superficial…ironic?