Simone Biles is 28 years old! Because she became so famous as a teen, I think a lot of us still feel so protective of her and we’re like “no, Simone, don’t do that, you’re still a kid!” But she’s not, she’s a grown woman, she’s married and she’s semi-retired from gymnastics. There’s an ongoing conversation about whether the Paris Olympics were Simone’s swan song or whether she’ll feel like competing at the LA Olympics. Well, this story sort of convinced me that Simone is already retired. Simone spoke on TikTok and then to People Magazine about plastic surgery and what she’s had done. She had her eye bags taken care of, she had a scar on one ear fixed, and… she got breast implants. Yeah, Paris was her swan song!
Simone Biles is continuing to be her transparent self. The Olympic gymnast, 28, opened up to PEOPLE exclusively about her decision to undergo cosmetic surgery and why it’s important for her to speak publicly on the topic now.
“It’s just who I am and I feel like I’ve always tried to be open, honest and relatable,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively, before diving in at length about her procedures, the reason she had them done and why others should feel “no shame” for their choices.
The conversation arose shortly after Biles revealed on TikTok that she has undergone three plastic surgeries so far, and urged her followers to guess the work she had done. However, she noted that two of the three wouldn’t be noticeable. The seven-time Olympic gold medalist didn’t explicitly state the surgeries she underwent in the video, but she responded to several of her followers who dropped their guesses in the comment section, per her request.
While Biles played coy about getting a breast augmentation online, simply adding the cherries emoji, she was transparent about her lower blepharoplasty (which lessens bagginess from the lower eyelids and eliminates excess skin from upper eyelids, per the Cleveland Clinic) and earlobe surgery. During the interview, Biles doubled down on her TikTok tidbit that two of her surgeries are “things you would never notice” and explained why she had to get them done.
“I got a lower bleph because me and my family have, I call it the ‘Biles eye bags,’ ” she explains. “We’ve just always had them, hereditary, and so that was just a big flaw. Every time I would go to a shoot, they’re like, ‘Oh, can we put some strips on her?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, baby, I had 12 hours last night, these aren’t going away. These are just hereditary,’ ” she shares, adding, “So it’s something that I wanted to fix.”
Biles then explained that she got “plastic surgery” on her ear “to get it fixed” because one of her earrings “got ripped out” when she was a kid.
Then, Biles opened up about her breast augmentation, but emphasized that it wasn’t because she “didn’t like” how she looked prior to getting them done.
“Okay, obviously you can notice the breasts,” she says. “But other than that, it’s just feeling good about yourself and loving yourself, and I’ve always been very vocal about that. And not that I didn’t like the way I looked or the way I felt,” she makes clear, explaining, “It’s just something that I notice obviously a little bit more because I live in this body, I’m just so used to it.”
Biles then shared the message she hopes the younger generation takes away from her transparency on the topic.
“I also think it shows young girls that they have the right to their own choices, whatever they are, and that’s no shame added as well,” she says. “I feel like nowadays with social media, you see everyone and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, how does she look so good?’ Social media is not real, so that’s why I try to be as transparent as possible. But that’s why also I’ve told them, on my 27th birthday I got Botox — and for me, it didn’t go well. I didn’t like it because I had a floating eyebrow and everyone was asking what that was…. As long as you love yourself, that’s really all that matters.”
Maybe I’m good at tuning out the noise on certain celebrities, but I don’t think there was a big backlash to Simone talking about her Botox? I remember there was some disappointment and some general thoughts of “she didn’t need that,” but most reasonable people just shrugged and said “her body, her choice.” That’s how I feel about her implants too – like many female gymnasts, Simone was very small-chested, and I completely understand why she would want to get implants to feel what it’s like. Judging her new girls from the photos, her implants are pretty proportional to her small frame and they look cute.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Simone’s IG.
