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Hey, Hollywood: Can you be honest with us?

Kylie Jenner (Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)
Kylie Jenner (Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)

Hi, my name is Caleigh and I am a hair extension addict. I love the way they look and the way they feel. They’re full and long and fabulous and I wear them 24/7. (Well, I have no choice really, since they’re sewn in.) Why am I telling you this, you ask? My answer - why wouldn’t I?! I’ll tell anyone who asks…and even those who don’t. I’m not ashamed or embarrassed, after all. I take pleasure in passing on the weave wisdom and letting other women know it’s an option for them too. Plus, I feel like it’s important to be honest with one another about some of the lengths (pun intended) we all go to feel good and look great.

Maybe it’s the incredible Instagram filter that hides your wrinkles, or perhaps it’s the cold laser treatments you’ve been getting on your skin. It could be that wizardly eyebrow specialist you’ve been visiting or that ass-kicking personal trainer who’s been whipping you into shape. Whatever it may be, it’s these admissions that help us keep our personal expectations in check, our confidence up and our comradery strong. We’re all in it together.

Now if only we could work on the lack of honesty from women in Hollywood. A lot of us women, young and old, have the perception that celebrities are perfect; that they all do actually “wake up like this,” as Beyonce put it; that they are all born with strong, sculpted brows, plump, shiny lips, perfectly proportioned bodies and hair that holds a curl all day. It’s these assumptions that often cause women and children watching from home to feel badly about themselves and beat themselves up about why they weren’t blessed with the effortless looks of their favourite celebs. The truth is, it isn’t effortless for anyone. In fact, it takes a village.

Most stars travel with a professional hair and makeup crew and have a team of people who help take the perfect “selfie” and write the perfect caption. They have dermatologists on standby, not to mention trainers and personal chefs who help them fit into the skimpy dresses their stylists pick out for them. If I had that much help, I’d look like Charlize Theron too… well maybe not exactly, but you get the point. The problem is, most of Hollywood goes to great lengths to hide, deny or omit the reality, that they have full time, world class, all-out aesthetic assistance.

A recent example is, of course, Kylie Jenner. For the last few years we’ve kept up with the youngest Kardashian’s growing lips - watching her morph from a sweet young girl with a thin mouth to a sexy vixen with an over-plumped pout. Hard to ignore, she has been asked repeatedly by the press about the drastic changes. Her response? According to Jenner, her face is simply changing as she’s growing up. Oh, and she also makes them look a little bigger with the help of some special makeup tricks. Desperate to follow in her footsteps, the response from her young fans at first consisted of frustrated make-up tutorial videos, attempting, without avail, to achieve that Jenner look. But soon the makeup tutorials turned to gruesome videos of fans performing a drastic and dangerous stunt to maximize their mouths – sucking on bottles until their lips swelled, bruised and sometimes ripped. Now, Jenner has finally decided to come clean about her enhancements – admitting on the most recent season of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" that she has in fact had fillers injected. She wasn’t born with those lips. They didn’t get bigger over night. It wasn’t a makeup stunt. If she had just come forward and been honest from the beginning, it may have saved a lot of grief and suffering for young girls who spent hours, days and weeks agonizing over why their faces weren’t evolving the same way.

And let's talk about Photoshop. I’m not just talking about magazine covers. Whether it’s making arms thinner, boobs bigger, skin lighter or eyes brighter – very rarely are we ever exposed to the real images. Obviously this only adds to the dishonest and unachievable standard of beauty that exists today. But now, thanks to advancements in technology, these photographic alterations aren’t just happening on newsstands, they’re also taking place on social media. At risk of exposing myself to “the Bey-gency” – do you remember when Beyonce was caught altering her Instagram photos and widening her thigh gap, more than once? Instead of flaunting her bootylicious (and totally badass) bod, she thinned out her thighs – hoping to leave us with the false impression of what she looks like.

Iggy Azalea (Photo by C Flanigan/Getty Images)
Iggy Azalea (Photo by C Flanigan/Getty Images)

Of course there are always exceptions to the rule and recently one star felt it necessary to speak the truth about her changing body. Iggy Azalea recently admitted that she underwent breast enhancement surgery. She cites not wanting to keep secrets from her fans as one of the reasons for her honesty, explaining that “I never see celebrities talk about it, although I know 80 per cent of them have done it too.” If more of her peers followed in her footsteps, it would certainly help adjust the perceptions and manage the expectations of the people at home, and alter the unrealistic standards of beauty in the world today.

What do you think? Should stars be more upfront? Let us know in the comments or by tweeting @YahooShineCA.