The Real Housewives of New Jersey’s Jennifer Aydin is no stranger to sharing her cosmetic surgery experiences—after all, she’s married to board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. N. Bill Aydin. The mom of five frequently takes to Instagram to talk about the procedures she’s gotten—including a tummy tuck and back liposuction—and document the recovery processes. (She’s such a plastic surgery fan that she even created a special post-procedure pillow.)
And just hours before the show’s season 12 premiere, Aydin posted a preemptive explanation as to why she’ll look so different on television this year, saying that filming took place while she was still healing from a recent rhinoplasty and chin implant (neither of which her husband performed).
“The day this picture was taken was June 14th (Teresa’s pool party), 4 weeks after my surgery. I went to Turkey for my nephews [sic] christening and while there, I got rhinoplasty with chin implant and facial lipo with @drmustafaaliyaik. I’m totally aware of the criticism some of you may have after you see my face tonight. I had them [sic] too! Keep in mind that it was exactly 4 weeks after the date of my surgery. My face was still swollen and numb and it was hard to move, speak or smile. My surgery was already planned from way before I got the news of when filming was to start. And even though I was nervous on some of the backlash that may happen and I had no idea how whack [sic] I would look on camera, I remembered that I signed up to show my life. All aspects of it. So instead of healing before I filmed, I healed while I filmed (in more ways than 1), and let you all watch,” she captioned the photo of herself.
However, according to New York City board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Konstantin Vasyukevich, Aydin’s appearance should’ve been fairly normal by the time filming started. “While the final result of a rhinoplasty might take a year or more to develop, it would already look quite good on camera about two to three weeks after surgery,” he says. “It’s quite common with rhinoplasty to have some residual swelling that will take months to completely resolve, but the good news is that it’s fairly subtle and wouldn’t be noticeable to most people.” Similarly, with a chin implant, you’d see the initial result within one to two weeks and the final result after one to two months, he adds.
Back in July, Aydin told Bravo more about her decision to undergo both surgeries: “I’ve always had a bit of insecurity about my nose, and I love the way that my pictures look in filters. I just thought, instead of just always filtering my face, why don’t I just change my nose so it looks like a filter?” The chin implant, however, was more of a spontaneous decision, which she attributed to the recommendation of both her surgeon, Istanbul-based Dr. Mustafa Ali Yanik, and her husband.
In today’s Instagram post, Aydin went on to say that, while she is happy with how her nose has healed, she never liked her chin implant and just had it removed by New York City board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Ramtin Kassir. (She even shared a video of the removed implant on her Instagram stories, saying, “I had a cute chin before and now it’s back.”)
She also told followers she’d be posting some personal video diaries from her surgeries back in May over the next few days, saying, “I am warning you, it looks bad.” Indeed, the videos, posted to her Instagram story, show a barely recognizable Aydin bandaged, bruised, and swollen.
“I look, like, so scary. I don’t want to FaceTime the kids. Surprisingly, this is not painful, it’s just uncomfortable. I’m just thinking it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” she says in a video diary filmed the day after surgery. A video shot two days later shows her noticeably more swollen and bruised, but she’s somewhat improved by later that night. “I did a video diary this morning, and I was much worse,” she says. “I put some ice on my eyes, I’ve been doing arnica and using my beauty pillow, which has been a godsend because I can’t sleep on my face—this gives me the support I need. My eyes finally feel like they’re open. This morning, they felt so swollen, I felt like my eyes were closed. The only thing I could see was the swelling on my cheeks, I feel like I can talk a little better. It looks like it’s calming down, everything.”
On the season 12 premiere, Aydin still had her surgical bandages on in several scenes. She also explained her decision to undergo the surgeries—and why her husband didn’t perform them. “I went to a doctor in Turkey that I found on Instagram over a year ago, because after having my tummy tuck last year with Bill, he told me I was the worst patient in the world, and he was never doing surgery on me ever again,” she said in one of her interviews.
Meanwhile, her castmates weren’t particularly supportive: “She looks totally different, she’s unrecognizable,” Margaret Josephs said at the first cast event of the season. “It looks terrible, I’m sorry, it’s bad,” said Jackie Goldschneider.
How much more of Aydin’s experience and recovery will be featured on the show—and how the other Housewives and fans will react—remains to be seen as the season continues.
