Why Ariel Winter Had Breast Reduction Surgery

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The young actress reveals the very good reasons behind her plastic surgery. (Photo: Corbis Images)

It’s certainly not surprising to find out that a celebrity went under the knife in a plastic surgeon’s office. But Modern Family’s Ariel Winter elected to have a procedure in order to improve her physical health and emotional well-being.

“Being a 5-foot tall girl and having extremely large breasts is really ostracizing and excruciatingly painful,“ the actress who turns 18 on January 28th revealed to People magazine.

Along with the physical pain, she suffered from insensitive comments via online bullying about dressing inappropriately. “The Internet bullies are awful,” she told Glamour in August. “I could post a photo where I feel good, and 500 people will comment about how fat I am and that I am disgusting.”

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And even though she may have been smiling for the cameras "on the inside, I wasn’t feeling so happy.”

“Breast reductions surgery is one of the most common procedures that plastic surgeons do in the United States,” Daniel Y. Maman, MD, a board certified plastic surgeon at 740 Park Plastic Surgery in New York City and Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, tells Yahoo Health. “In fact, it has the highest satisfaction rate of any plastic surgical procedure that we do, which has been proven in the literature. And the reason is that the change in the patient’s quality of life is significant.”

Dr. Maman explains that Winter’s case is not unusual since the most common reasons for having this surgery stems from back pain, neck pain, bra discomfort due to shoulder grooving from the bra straps, irritation and rashes under the breasts and the inability to do typical activities, such as working out. “It’s also very commonly done in young women, particularly before they go off to college or during college, for self-esteem issues and bullying.”

He adds that the side effects are “extremely minimal” and that the surgery takes between two and three hours. “It’s done as an ambulatory procedure—meaning patients come in and come home the same day,” says Dr. Maman.

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Also, this procedure is not just for the younger generation. As long as a woman is healthy, states Dr. Maman, she can undergo breast reduction surgery. “And the common response from women in their 50s and 60s has been, ‘I don’t know what I waited so many years to have this operation!’”

As for the young actress who’s been playing Alex Dunphy on the hit ABC series since 2009, she couldn’t be more pleased with her new look. “It was an instant weight lifted off my chest—both literally and figuratively,“ she stated. "There’s a confidence you find when you finally feel right in your body.”

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