Amber Tamblyn is sharing her truth.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants actress shared for the first time that she got her ears pinned back when she was 12 years old, and why it’s a decision she still wrestles with to this day.
“As a little girl, I had ears that stuck out like butterfly wings,” Tamblyn wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times published Oct. 20. “Some kids at my school in Los Angeles would make fun of them, and I’d often stare at myself in the mirror wishing my ears would lay flat against my head.”
The 41-year-old wrote that getting her big break in Hollywood—getting cast to play Emily Quartermaine on General Hospital in 1995 at the age of 12—prompted her to act on her insecurity.
“I opted to undergo ear-pinning surgery, a decision I’ve never made public until now,” Tamblyn wrote. “For years, my parents watched my struggle with private shame, though they understood I was a tough kid who could handle it. But once I knew millions of people all over the world would be judging me on their television screens, not just on a playground, that knowledge changed everything for me.”
