Michelle Visage Opens Up About Disease She Developed From Breast Implants

Michelle Visage is getting candid about her health issues.

The RuPaul’s Drag Race judge made an appearance on Red Table Talk on Wednesday (September 29).

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During the chat, Michelle opened up about developing an autoimmune disease because of her breast implants, and her decision to have them removed ultimately.

“I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune condition that attacks the thyroid. It happened pretty soon after my first set of implants. And so my journey started there,” she said.

“I would have their flare-ups where I would gain a ton of weight. My body would go bloat up and down. And I would go to my doctors and I’d say, ‘if this is an autoimmune issue, and my body’s attacking an invader, and just happens to be attacking my thyroid, the only invader are these two blobs of silicon in my body. So why wouldn’t I take them out?’ I even had one doctor say, ‘Just don’t take ‘em out yet, because we wanna make sure it’s not something else.’ What else could it be? I’ve done every test! You can’t imagine what I have done. After 20-plus years of chasing my health constantly, continuously, things getting worse, and I couldn’t understand why. That was my last step. And to be honest, I was over them anyway.”

“I had three breast augmentations to go bigger. It was like your size, teeny, teeny, tiny. I remember always wanting the boobs. Growing up in a household where my father was a subscriber to Playboy magazine, I would look in the magazines and say, ‘When am I gonna get that?’ I was adopted, and when I met my biological mother, the two things I asked her first were, ‘Why do I have no boobs’ and, ‘Why do I have a bump in my nose?’” she explained of her own perception of her body.

She also explained her own family’s fears for her career after getting them removed.

“My breasts were always part of the fun, the caricatureness. And I have a wonderful therapist. And I was so ready and honest, I don’t regret a thing. Though I have a padded bra on now, when I see myself, it’s literally a ribcage. There is a nipple on top of a ribcage, and I love it. I wish I loved it at 17 and 18 and 19. I wish to God I did. You know? And both my daughters, I try to instill in them how perfect they are. And my daughter said, when I told the family I was gonna take ‘em out, she’s like, ‘Well, there goes your career.’ It was like, ‘I bet you people do think that, right?’”

Click here to watch the full episode.

Jada Pinkett Smith and Willow Smith also revealed the surgery they both considered getting during the episode.