Six years after undergoing extensive plastic surgery, Heidi Montag Pratt has urged young girls not to follow her example, emphasizing that worshiping outer beauty is a "scheme" of the devil and the "opposite" of what God wants for His children.
The former The Hills star made a short video for Faithwire in which she shared how, now that she is expecting her first child with husband Spencer, her worldview has dramatically changed.
"Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised," she begins the 3-minute video, quoting Proverbs 31:30.
"I've really been reflecting a lot about myself and what kind of role model I've been (and) I think that in the beauty department I've been a really bad role model and that's a hard thing to digest," she continues. "I want to be a great role model for my kids and to have them look at my inner beauty and to care about it and not worry about what I look like."
Pratt goes onto discuss the dangers of comparing ourselves to others or trying to maintain unrealistic standards of beauty and outward appearances: "It is hard in this world and I feel like there is more pressure to be beautiful by the world's standards than ever before," she says. "I feel like there's more hate and criticism and negativity for women out there and it's not just by the world, its by us and it's important to stand up against that and to have our values based on who we are in our inner beauty then what we look like. Beauty is fleeting, everything is temporary, and that's just not God's plan for us.
Just under a decade ago, Pratt was publicly critiqued and slammed for her plastic surgery, which included a back shaping procedure, inner thigh reduction, breast augmentation and nose and chin procedure. Her family's horrified reaction, captured on camera on The Hills, was heartbreaking.
"Why would you want to look like Barbie?" her mother asked. "To everybody else that saw you, you were Heidi. Nobody in the world could have looked like Heidi Montag."
In her video, Pratt urges women to find confidence in who God made them to be and stop comparing themselves to others: "It's important to listen to God...we're not supposed to compare ourselves to other people...that's completely the devil and his schemes, that's the opposite of what God wants for our lives. It takes away from Him and what we're supposed to do. We're all supposed to be different...we're not supposed to be these cookie-cutter people, and how heartbreaking it must be for God to watch that happen. I hope and pray we can have deliverance from that."
Pratt and her husband made millions starring in The Hills, a show about millennials living in Los Angeles, but squandered most of their wealth on expensive clothing, houses, and plastic surgery.
Speaking to Faithwire, she said her public rise and fall allowed her to see her need for God in a very real way.
"Because of God, I was able to rebuild and refocus," she said. "I try to prioritize prayer time everyday, at least once a day, try to listen to all the Christian music I love and preaching everyday and just keep it part of my daily life because if you don't keep it part of your daily life, it slowly kind of slips away from you, for me at least, I have just reprioritized that and honestly that is my life."
