Why Barbra Streisand Refused To Get Plastic Surgery To Boost Her Success

Barbra Streisand explains in her memoir that a doctor told her she had a deviated septum, which occurs when one side of the nasal passage is significantly smaller than the other. She suspected this contributed to her distinct vocal timbre. Thus, a nasal surgery correcting this deviation would prove too risky — and painful, for that matter.

“That probably hurts,” Streisand told Rachel Martin of NPR in 2022. “It might even change the sound of my voice. You know, my deviated septum makes me who I am. Why would I change it?” The singer added that even her name was called into question at the onset of her career. “When I first started to record…they wanted me to change my name to Barbra Sands. No — Joni Sands or something like that.” (While she never went by a stage name, the singer did change the way she spells her name.)

The “People” singer went so far as to suggest a nose job would’ve ruined her entire career in a 1977 Playboy magazine interview, per Barbra-Archives.com. Moreover, Streisand added in her memoir that it was a personal preference. The singer said she enjoyed the look of curved, long noses like Italian actress Silvana Mangano. “Everyone seemed to think she was beautiful,” Streisand wrote.