34 Times Celebs Took "Beauty Is Pain" Wayyy Too Seriously

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We've all heard the saying "beauty is pain," and unfortunately, that sentiment has been way too normalized (especially for women). Way too often, putting yourself through discomfort or injury is praised for the sake of beauty standards — especially in Hollywood.

Here are 34 times celebrities took "beauty is pain" way too seriously:

1.In 2025, Suki Waterhouse tweeted, "'suki you never tweet anymore' have you ever considered I wore pants so tight 6 months ago it caused a hernia & I've been too scared to tell you." She also shared a picture of herself wearing said pants onstage (you can see it here).

Suki Waterhouse / Via x.com

2.Sofía Vergara's red carpet looks often cause her to bleed. In 2016, she told Net-A-Porter, "My body has changed with age. People will often say that I wear the same thing on the red carpet, but I know my body: it's very voluptuous, and I've got the boobs of a stripper. They're a 32DDD, and because they're real, they're everywhere, so I need my dresses to have structure — and under armor. There is so much going on under my dresses that I bleed at the end of award ceremonies. In ten years, I think it would be good to have a reduction. I don't think it's even going to be an option not to have surgery, because I'm going to start having back pains. I wouldn't make them too small – just enough that I don't end up looking like an old stripper."

Todd Williamson / Getty Images

3.In 2022, Jennifer Coolidge told Allure, "For The White Lotus, I didn't want to look like a big, white marshmallow on the beach in Hawaii, so I got a spray tan. I got on the plane, and I started to feel really weird. By the time I got off the flight, I had to go to the emergency room. [During the production], I think we ended up using regular makeup. The minute we stopped filming, I would shower."

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4.In 2016, Gwyneth Paltrow told the New York Times, "Generally, I'm open to anything. I've been stung by bees. It's a thousands of years old treatment called apitherapy. People use it to get rid of inflammation and scarring. It's actually pretty incredible if you research it. But, man, it’s painful." (Note: According to the BBC, researchers say bee sting therapy is "unsafe and unadvisable.")

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5.In 2022, Zac Efron told Men's Health, "That Baywatch look, I don't know if that's really attainable. There's just too little water in the skin. Like, it's fake; it looks CGI'd. And that required Lasix, powerful diuretics, to achieve. So I don't need to do that. I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3 percent body fat."

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The process also impacted his mental health. He said, "I started to develop insomnia, and I fell into a pretty bad depression, for a long time. Something about that experience burned me out. I had a really hard time recentering. Ultimately they chalked it up to taking way too many diuretics for way too long, and it messed something up."

Frank Masi/ © Paramount Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

6.In 2011, Joan Collins wore a Georges Hobeika dress that was so tight, she had to be rushed from the Vanity Fair Oscars Party to the hospital. In an essay for the Daily Mail, she reportedly wrote, "Next thing I knew, I was surrounded by some rather attractive firefighters who were asking me questions such as: 'What's your name?' (as if they didn't know) and 'How old are you?' (which I refused to answer). Apparently, I had fainted in [her husband] Percy's arms, and he, in a panic, had asked security to call an ambulance — which was roomier than [her sister] Jackie's limo and, thanks to the sirens, much swifter in Hollywood traffic. Not quite how I had expected to end this glamorous night!"

Jon Kopaloff / FilmMagic / Via Getty

"Nevertheless, I put myself in the care of professionals at the hospital's Emergency Room. There, after an hour of tests, the doctors discharged me with stern admonishments not to wear such tight dresses — and to eat in future if I was expected to last the pace at the fabulous Vanity Fair party," she said.

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7.Before she was a megastar, Cardi B got illegal butt injections at a basement apartment in Queens for $800. In 2018, she told GQ, "They don't numb your ass with anything. It was the craziest pain ever. I felt like I was gonna pass out. I felt a little dizzy. And it leaks for, like, five days."

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However, she later had 95 percent of them surgically removed and warned her fans to never get the procedure done. In a 2022 Instagram Live, she said, "All I'm going to say is that if you're young, if you're 19, 20, 21, and sometimes you're too skinny, and you be like, 'OMG, I don't have enough fat to put in my ass,' so you result to ass shots, don't!"

Mike Coppola / Getty Images for MTV

8.Zendaya's stylist, Law Roach, trained her to wear painful Christian Louboutin heels when she was a teenager. In 2024, he told the Cutting Room Floor podcast, "I think that the So Kate is one of the most versatile shoes. It's also one of the most painful. It actually started when she was, like, 14, and I remember she had these So Kates on all day. It’s the first time she’d ever worn them, and she was collapsing. She's like, 'I have to take these shoes off.' I'm like, 'You will not take these shoes off.' And she kept them on, and the next day she put them on again, and the next day she put them on again. So, it kind of became our thing, and now, her feet are just kind of, like, trained... She could wear them all day. She could dance in them, she could kick her legs up, she could run downstairs."

Steve Granitz / WireImage / Via Getty

9.When it comes to toughing it out on the red carpet, shoes are just the beginning for Zendaya. At the 2018 Met Gala, she wore a cumbersome Joan of Arc-inspired look. She told Vogue, "The day before, going there, putting it on, I was like, 'Wow.' It was so heavy 'cause of the beading, but it was so beautifully constructed, and it's Versace. And typically, like, I can handle a night out, you know, with my heels and everything. I've been wearing heels for a long time, but I don't know. It was something about a mixture of, like, wearing these platforms and, like, the heaviness of my dress. I was struggling. I was like, 'I need to sit down.' But it was all worth it."

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10.Zendaya famously wore a vintage metal Mugler suit to the Dune: Part 2 premiere in London. In 2024, she told Vogue, "This suit, everybody knows it. And I was like, 'I wonder if I could wear that.' And so, I sent it to [stylist Law Roach], and I was like, 'What if we wore this for the premiere?' He was like, 'Are you being serious?...Don't play with me. Like, don't get me started on something and make me do this, and you're gonna like chicken out at the last minute and be too scared to wear it.' And I was like, 'I mean, if we can do it.'"

Samir Hussein / WireImage / Via Getty

She continued, "One of the men who originally made it was with us, and he was like, 'You know, we can try it, but there's also a world where certain parts won't fit.' Like, our proportions might be very different — my elbow is a little bit lower or my whatever, then it doesn't work because there's certain hinges and places where your arms and things need to move. But we tried it on, and I was like, 'Guys, I think it's fitting.' It fit like a glove, and I was like, 'This is so crazy.' And everybody was like, 'Woah!' It just felt very like, I was meant to be, whatever. Immediately, I think after wearing it for like 10 minutes or less than that, I got, like, really, like, lightheaded. The metal conducts and holds onto heat very quickly and kind of traps heat in."

Neil Mockford / FilmMagic / Via Getty

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"I'm wearing a complete bodysuit, so there's a barrier, so you already have a layer of material kind of on your skin. As the days were coming up, I was like, 'This is a bad idea. Like, why did I do this?' But I put it on, I went out there, and I did it," she said.

Samir Hussein / WireImage / Via Getty

11.Another one of Zendaya's iconic Dune outfits — the wet-look Balmain gown from the 2021 Dune premiere in Venice — was modeled after a corset she saw on the runway, but it was custom-made and molded to her body. After her stylist, Law Roach, contacted the designer about collaborating, they sent a woman to Zendaya's house to make a cast of her body. She told Harper's Bazaar, "This is made of leather, but it kind of looks liquid, but it's all solid. So it's really difficult to sit in and to breathe in because it doesn't, you can't breathe. It's just, like, hard, so the whole movie, I'm like...just focusing on breathing."

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12.In a 2018 blog post titled "The Skincare Treatment I'll Never Do Again," Kim Kardashian said getting the vampire facial — where your own blood is drawn, and the platelet-rich plasma is separated and injected back into your face via microneedling — was "so not worth it." She wrote, "Before I got the procedure, I just found out that I was pregnant, so I couldn't use numbing cream or a pain killer, and both are suggested. It was really rough and painful for me…My show was also filming the treatment, so I felt I couldn't chicken out. It was honestly the most painful thing ever!"

13.Kim Kardashian also has a long history of painful Met Gala looks. In 2019, she wore a wet look Mugler outfit that consisted of a corset made by Mr. Pearl beneath silicone-covered silk organza. On Instagram, she shared that she had to take "corset breathing lessons from none other than Mr. Pearl."

Dia Dipasupil / FilmMagic / Via Getty

She also told the Wall Street Journal, "I have never felt pain like that in my life. I'll have to show you pictures of the aftermath when I took it off — the indentations on my back and my stomach."

Neilson Barnard / Getty Images

14.At the 2022 Met Gala, Kim wore Marilyn Monroe's famous "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" dress. In order for it to fit without alterations, she did a dangerous crash diet, which involved adding meat back to her typically plant-based menu. One of the side effects was a painful psoriasis flareup. She told Allure, "Psoriasis broke out over my body, and I got psoriatic arthritis, so I couldn't really move my hands. It was really painful, and I had to go to a rheumatologist who put me on a steroid. I was freaking out. I cut out the meat again, and it's calmed down."

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15.And the 2024 Met Gala, she wore a custom Margiela by John Galliano gown with a metal corset. In a Season 6 episode of The Kardashians, she said, "I've never felt this way before, where I feel like I can't breathe. I can handle it for so long, but it's like, I have to pee, I can't breathe… I literally was dying... I'm literally gonna throw up. I've never been more uncomfortable...I've never been in this much pain before. I was gonna sneak out right before the dinner, but then I walked by [Anna Wintour's] table, and Anna goes, 'Perfect, you're here. Can you sit in my seat while I go make my rounds?'"

Dia Dipasupil / Getty Images

Here's what her back looked like when she took off the corset. She said it was "abso-fucking-lutely" worth it.

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She said, "Yes! That's just who I am. If you look good, it was all worth it."

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16.Kim's little sister, Kylie Jenner, has followed in her footsteps. It started when she made her Met Gala debut in 2016, where she wore a silver Balmain gown.

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Afterward, she shared a picture of her bruised feet and scratched-up ankles on Snapchat with the caption, "When ur dress made you bleed and ur feet are purple." In a follow-up post, she added, "It was worth it though."

Kylie Jenner / Via snapchat.com

17.At the 2017 Met Gala, Kylie wore a tight Versace dress. On an episode of Life of Kylie, she tried it on for the first time. She said it needed to be tight enough for her to "kind of suffocate."

Here's the full look:

Jackson Lee / FilmMagic / Via Getty

18.And in an Instagram story post following the 2025 Met Gala, Kylie shared how a styling tip from Ferragamo creative director Maximillian Davis left her feet in pain. Sharing a video of her team trying to help her get her shoes off, she said, "Max told me to tape my feet into these shoes, and now my feet are stuck in the shoes! Ow!"

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In a follow-up post, she shared that they were able to get the shoes off successfully.

Kylie Jenner / Via Instagram: @kyliejenner

19.Will Poulter put himself through "a lot of gym work and a very, very specific diet" to prepare for his MCU debut as Adam Warlock — who's genetically engineered to be "perfect" — in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. He told the Independent, "It's difficult talking about it because with Marvel it's all secret squirrel, but the most important thing is that your mental and physical health has to be number one, and the aesthetic goals have to be secondary, otherwise you end up promoting something that is unhealthy and unrealistic if you don't have the financial backing of a studio paying for your meals and training. I'm in a very privileged position in that respect, and I wouldn't recommend anyone do what I did to get ready for that job."

Jessica Miglio / © Marvel / © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

He also said, "I've gone through periods of looking at food and feeling like I can't face it, and then you blink and the next minute you're ready to eat furniture because you're so hungry... The whole social side of your life has to take a back seat. I'm in a routine that is so rigid that being able to go out for dinner with friends is not something I've been able to do. I'm looking forward to being able to again."

Jessica Miglio / © Marvel / © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

20.While playing the titular role in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Rachel Brosnahan got a "corset-related injury" from her character's '50s and '60s-era outfits. She "can't take super deep breaths anymore." In 2020, she told The Late Late Show with James Corden, "We talk so fast on the show that to get all the words out, you can't really take very many breaths. And I think I wasn't breathing a lot, and I was a bit constrained, and apparently, some of my ribs are sort of fused together."

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21.At the 2012 London premiere of Total Recall, Jessica Biel reportedly said, "My dress is so tight. Getting up the stairs was a lot harder than any of the stunts we did in the film."

Anthony Harvey / Getty Images

22.In 2021, actor Zhang Meng ended up in the hospital after attending China's Weibo Awards Ceremony in a dress with a built-in corset. On the social media Weibo, she reportedly posted, "Red carpet + corset = [a visit to the] orthopedic department? I used my life as collateral for my good figure." In a follow-up comment, she added, "Thank you everyone for your concern, it's not a major issue. When the dress arrived, it was a little small [for me], but I didn't have the time to alter it. There's nothing wrong with the dress, I'm just too fat! Everyone, please make sure to take care of your health, even as you continue in your pursuit of beauty!"

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23.Old Hollywood icon Rita Hayworth reportedly went through a year of electrolysis to raise her hairline by an inch. The treatment involved shocking her follicles with a skinny metal probe to remove the hair permanently.

Silver Screen Collection / Silver Screen / Via Getty

24.In 2024, Mary Jo Eustace told E! News, "I tried Morpheus8, which is a great procedure, I'm not knocking it, but it's very painful... It actually injures your skin to get results. And it was a little painful. I have a lot of friends who've done that, and they're not going to do it again because of the pain factor." She also said that the numbing cream she was given only worked "to a certain extent."

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25.In his 2024 memoir Karma, Boy George wrote, "I had a tummy tuck not long after [getting hair transplants], which was the most painful thing I've ever done because I went on tour straight after with Cyndi Lauper with the blood bag attached. I'd previously lost seven stone [98 lbs.] doing the metabolic balance diet, and I needed to get rid of the excess skin. When anyone asks about my scar, I say I had twins by Cesarean."

Stephanie Augello / Variety via Getty Images

26.At the 2018 AMAs, Taylor Swift wore a Balmain mirror ball dress. In her Netflix documentary Miss Americana, behind-the-scenes clips revealed that she had trouble breathing in the outfit.

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Here's the full look:

Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

27.In a since-deleted Instagram post, Priyanka Chopra Jonas said, "My second Met Gala outfit was this blood-red Ralph Lauren beautiful outfit with the gold hood. But the corset under that thing, I couldn't breathe. I felt like it reshaped my ribs. So hard to sit during dinner and I obviously couldn't eat too much during that night."

ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images

28.At the 2018 Met Gala, Rihanna's pope-inspired Margiela look was difficult to wear because of its weight. She told Entertainment Tonight, "It was heavy. Every step was a squat. I promise you, my butt gained from that night. I had another option that was a lot more simple, same Margiela, but I felt like it was an insult to the people who sat there and, like, hand-beaded that entire thing, to just say, 'No, put that in the archives.' It was so great, I couldn't deny it."

Noam Galai / Getty Images for New York Magazine

29.In a 2025 TikTok post, Ellie Goudling shared the painful-looking results of her cosmetic procedure, adding, "I give up trying to look snatched." In the caption, she said she "got attacked by a laser grill," reportedly referring to a laser facial.

Ellie Goulding / Via tiktok.com

30.To prepare for the titular role in Ant-Man, Paul Rudd "basically didn’t eat anything for about a year." In 2015, he told Variety, "I took the Chris Pratt approach to training for an action movie. Eliminate anything fun for a year, and then you can play a hero."

31.At the 2018 Met Gala, Bella Hadid wore a Chrome Hearts gown with a coordinating Chrome Hearts x Gareth Pugh veil. On her Instagram story, she said, "If anyone was wondering why I couldn't move, it's because a legend by the name of @jenatkinhair sewed a whole entire 10-pound veil to my head."

Jackson Lee / Via Getty

32.While playing Kate Sharma in Bridgerton, Simone Ashley needed help getting dressed "because when you're in a corset, you can't put your shoes on." The corset caused other problems, too. In 2022, she told Glamour UK, "On my first day, I was like, 'OK, first day as a leading lady, got to eat lots of food, be really energized.' So, I had this massive portion of salmon, and that's when I needed to be sick, basically because I was wearing the corset. I realized when you wear the corset, you just don't eat. It changes your body. I had a smaller waist very momentarily. Then, the minute you stop wearing it, you're just back to how your body is. I had a lot of pain with the corset, too. I think I tore my shoulder at one point!"

33.At the 2019 Billboard Latin Music Awards, Anitta wore a Galia Lahav look. She told Entertainment Tonight, "It's painful. A lot. I'm here smiling to you, pretending everything's okay, but I'm dying here inside. It's everything. Everything — hair, shoes, clothes."

Gabe Ginsberg / WireImage / Via Getty

34.And finally, at the 2016 Oscars, Jennifer Garner wore a custom Versace dress. On The Tonight Starring Jimmy Fallon, she said, "Do you know how they make it? See how I have a waist right now? I don't have one in real life anymore. What they do is, they move your organs around. There are basically two men who come in with screw guns, and they screwed me into a metal corset — this isn't true, but it was a metal corset, and it did take two Italian people who were talking very quickly. And the next thing you know, my ribs were compressed."