Heidi Montag: The 9 Main Reasons For Her Lack Of Self-Worth And Low Self-Esteem – And How They Led Her To Make Bad Decisions In Business & In Life

Of all couples featured on ‘The Hills’, let alone of all couples in the public eye, who would’ve thought that Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt would last for as long as they have? They’ve been together for 18 years now, married for 16, and have two lovely children together. They went through a lot together, starting from the fact that Heidi was put in a position where she had to choose between her relationship with Spencer and her friendship with Lauren Conrad. Ultimately, Heidi chose her relationship with Spencer. Truth be told, she made the right choice. In my eyes, anyone who makes another person choose between their friendship and their relationship with a partner isn’t a friend to begin with. I myself ended my friendship with my college best friend who made me feel like I had to choose between my friendship with her and my relationship with my husband. In fact, I ended numerous friendships because of the lack of respect they showed towards my husband when I showed all the respect I had towards their partners, even when I didn’t like them very much. Lauren also made Audrina feel like she had to choose between her friendship with her and her relationship with Justin Bobby. Their relationship was fake as Audrina was dating Corey Bohan at the time. Nonetheless, it’s pretty safe to say that she would’ve done the same thing in a real-life situation. I also distanced myself from any friend that had a partner who wasn’t good to them. The key word here is ‘to’ rather than ‘for’.

Heidi and Spencer were never perfect, not during the show, nor thereafter. They never claimed to be perfect to begin with. They were in their early 20’s when they met. They were bound to make mistakes, especially with the lifestyles that they chose for themselves, and later was controlled by other people. Spencer’s outbursts in the later seasons of the show deserved him at least ONE Emmy win. Lauren and Heidi’s friendship ended after rumours swirled that Lauren made a sex tape with her boyfriend at the time, Jason Wahler. Lauren believed Spencer was the one behind those rumours. After I watched ‘UnReal’ and knowing what we know now about the behind-the-scenes of ‘The Hills’, I wouldn’t be surprised if we ever found out that it was the producers of the show that started those rumours to begin with. To this day, Heidi and Spencer deny that they ever had anything to do with those rumours. Despite putting the drama aside, Lauren and Heidi are still not friends.

Heidi and Spencer, but especially Spencer, were made out to be the villains of ‘The Hills’. Spencer was taking his character far too seriously. He took him to the next level in season 6. But I personally felt bad for Heidi, and in some weird, cosmic turn of events, I could even empathize with her. She was young, naïve, and insecure. She lived in a world where beauty mattered, but she didn’t feel beautiful at all. So, in 2009, at just 23 years of age, she infamously went under the knife and had 10 (!) surgeries in one day. Those included:

• Chin reduction
• Breast augmentation
• Brow lift
• Liposuction
• Rhinoplasty
• Facial fat injections
• Ear pinning back

She said that she wasn’t aware of the repercussions at the time. She recalled such things happening as:

• Having part of her chin sawed off 
• A near-death experience when she was given the wrong dose of Demerol for pain relief 
• Having to have nurses at the house for months to help her recover

Francis Harry Ryan was the surgeon who operated Montag. He also operated on such celebrities as Shannon Tweed, Gene Simmons, Janice Dickinson, and many more. Also in 2009, he performed a breast implant surgery on Cassi Ventura, only to reverse the surgery the following day at Sean P. Diddy Comb’s demand. Ryan has since passed away in a car accident, which also hurt his dog, in 2010. Many out there theorize that Ryan committed suicide, citing possibility of a malpractice suit in response to this incident. But before his death, he denied Heidi’s claims that she almost died during the procedures. He even said Montag’s mother wanted to have a surgery done as well to have a mommy-and-me look after seeing her daughter. That statement very much contradicted Montag’s mother’s reaction to seeing her daughter after her surgeries in season 6 of ‘The Hills’.

No matter the case, its absolutely degusting that any medical professional would allow a patient to undergo 10 surgeries in one day. It just goes to show that the medical system really takes advantage of those who are vulnerable. They’re the ones that make them the most amount of money. Back in 2010, when she first revealed that she’d gone under the knife, Montag told People Magazine, ‘I think I look way better and I’m way happier. Nobody ages perfectly, so I plan to keep using surgery to make me as perfect as I can be.’ But almost a decade later, in 2019, she had a completely different outlook on those surgeries. She told Cosmopolitan, ‘I was way too young to make such a life-changing decision. I was under so much pressure because it was the beginning of comment sections and negativity and hate on the internet. I was also on TV where every perceived flaw is amplified. I think I looked in the mirror a little too much. I wish I had waited and not made a decision so young because I have long-term health complications.’

Spencer, on his part, also had something to say. He opened up to Cosmopolitan, ‘I was there for every second, so I know all about that journey. Let me just tell any ladies and gentlemen and gender nonconforming folks out there — just everyone: The phrase ‘minor surgical procedure’ does not exist. That’s the hard lesson we learned. There’s no such thing as one minor surgical procedure. And there’s certainly no such thing as 10 minor surgical procedures. Heidi thought people would stop criticizing her if she got surgery. Everything she did came from people criticizing her in the comments on Us Weekly and People Magazine. She brought printouts of what the trolls and haters said to the doctor and said, ‘Can we do something about this?’ Everyone’s insecure but it’s different when you’re young and on TV and everyone’s talking about you. It’s upsetting that you can go to a doctor and say ‘Here’s what I hate about myself,’ and he’ll say ‘I can fix that. For free.”

As I looked back on the very beginnings of ‘The Hills’, starting from season 1, when Heidi and Lauren were still friends, I realized that had an entirely different perspective on Heidi than I did back when I was a teenager. Heidi’s insecurities were showing up before she was ever on the internet; before magazines even cared about who she was. Those insecurities came from the people closest to her at the time, including Lauren. In fact, it was especially Lauren. I watched the first 3 episodes of ‘The Hills’ the other day, as if I had nothing better to do in my downtime, and I realized that Heidi and Lauren’s friendship was problematic from the start, and it was Lauren who was problematic, and not Heidi. The two friends initially moved to LA after graduating high school to go to college together. It was there that they met Audrina. Heidi knew her first and was the one who introduced Lauren to Audrina. Eventually, once she actually got to LA, Heidi came to realize that school might not be for her.

Lauren certainly made her feelings known. All Heidi wanted out of Lauren was her support in her decision, but Lauren couldn’t give even give her that. Instead, Lauren tried so hard to talk Heidi out of dropping out of school whenever the subject would come up. When Heidi gets the job that she so wanted, which allowed her to drop out of college, she excitedly calls Lauren to tell her the good news. Instead of being happy for her friend, Lauren is seemingly fake her on the phone and is actually disappointed in her decision. When she abruptly hangs up the phone on Heidi, Lauren starts singing ‘Beauty School Dropout’ by Frankie Avalon, which was featured in the 1978 film, ‘Grease’, starring the late Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, alongside her new friend and Teen Vogue co-worker, Whitney Port, while smirking and laughing at Heidi’s expense.

As I watched that storyline unfold, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sorry for Heidi. Here was a 19-year-old young woman trying to figure out her life, what she wanted, and what was right for her, and the people closest to her made her question everything. Her boyfriend at the time, Jordan, was only thinking of how anything she did benefited him rather than how it would help her and make her grow. Say what you want about Spencer, but he always supported Heidi’s ambition and motivated her to grow and learn from anything she aspired to do, even if he didn’t agree with what she did. Jordan, on the other hand, aspired Heidi to quit school and take the job she had an interview at because that would mean he’d get to spend more time with her. But when the job ended up being full time and not part time like Heidi initially thought, he told her to quit.

Lauren was a different type of unsupportive. She was the type that would support you as a friend if it fit her agenda. But if it didn’t, she’d almost make you look and feel stupid. At first, when I initially watched the show as a teen, I thought of her as someone I’d look up to, and I didn’t understand neither Heidi’s nor Audrina’s individual, and yet similar takes on their friendships with Lauren. But then, I got to watch the show as an adult, and it was a big fat ‘AHA!’ moment for me. I just thought that part of Lauren came out once Spencer came into Heidi’s life, as I wrote in my previous blog post, but as I watched the beginnings of the show just recently, I realized that it was always part of who Lauren was. In hindsight, Lauren was never good for Heidi, and maybe Heidi would’ve ended up a completely different person if she didn’t have Lauren questioning and judging her every move. Maybe it was because it was mid-2000’s, but didn’t Lauren understand that school isn’t for everyone? Whether or not the storyline was fake doesn’t change the fact that those were Lauren’s actual thoughts of Heidi’s decisions.

It’s almost important to note that unlike all of her ‘The Hills’ co-stars, including Lauren, Heidi didn’t come from a wealthy family. She didn’t come from money. She even stated that she couldn’t afford to attend school, which was why she took the job, the job Lauren was so judgemental about. With that said, Heidi was going through multiple set of insecurities right from the start, the insecurity of not being as beautiful as her friends and co-stars, as well as her not being able to afford the lifestyle her friends were leading her into. That’s not to say that those who come from wealth don’t have insecurities. In Heidi’s case, though, there could’ve been a certain level of pressure that she felt by being around the people that she hung around with and then being in the public eye on top of it.

Back in 2016, Heidi’s did an interview with BuzzFeed, where she looked back on her time on ‘The Hills’ including her friendship with Lauren and the sex tape rumour that inevitably ended her and Lauren’s friendship. She said, ‘The sex tape rumor had nothing to do with me, that’s why it’s so weird. It’s like, if you have a sex tape, that’s up to you. I want nothing to do with it. I think that the riff between Lauren and I was inevitable with where our lives were going. She wanted me to kind of be single with her and be with her all the time, and it just wasn’t possible. If I had to do ‘The Hills’ all over again, I would definitely have stood my ground more with Lauren and just have her be more honest with me. It was really hard getting her to agree to film with me and then once I got there, having her be honest with me. It was just a really challenging time, so I’m a much stronger and different person now, so I feel like I could go more toe-to-toe.’

In the same interview, Heidi revealed that the cast was responsible for their own wardrobe and makeup, and how she handled the situation during the first couple of seasons. She said, ‘During ‘The Hills’, we were not allowed to wear outfits twice, so I asked [MTV] to supply me with a wardrobe, but apparently I had to buy it all myself. Hair and makeup we had to do ourselves, so obviously I had no budget in Season 1 and 2, and then I started getting it done for about Season 3 and on.’

These revelations by Heidi pretty much confirms everything I’ve just said of my take on Heidi’s reasoning for her low self-esteem and self-worth in her younger years. I remember that time when Heidi revealed she had surgeries. The mocking didn’t stop. On the contrary, I think it actually got worse. It was a different time. The public couldn’t stop judging the reality star for her decision to go under the knife – 10 times in one day. It was like nothing Heidi ever did was ever good enough for the world. The 2000’s was a time. It was a time where we thought Jessica Simpson was fat, and that was all we could talk about. As I watched the 2005 version of Heidi when she filmed season 1 of ‘The Hills’, I couldn’t help but think how beautiful she looked before her surgeries. The scrutiny of the media got to her, and it’s a a real shame. At the time, the pressure to be ‘beautiful’ was a significant one, and it created a psychological impact of societal pressures.

Since that time in her life, Heidi has prioritized her physical and mental health. She’s incorporated physical fitness, diet, and therapy into her life. In a way, she’s become an advocate for women’s lack of self-worth and their relationships with themselves. She’s become an advocate for the destigmatization of mental health issues, and encourages women to prioritize their mental well-being and embrace self-compassion. She, along with Spencer started several business ventures with all the money and fame they obtained from ‘The Hills’. But since the show ended in 2010, they didn’t stop chasing fame and pretending to be people they weren’t. They made up an entire divorce story for themselves that was featured in Us Weekly. The entire ‘The Hills’ fandom was sad for them. Though they were the most hated two people on the show, in some cosmic way, the fans were rooting for them as a couple. The entire divorce headline went on for months. The following year, they confirmed to The Daily Beast that the breakup was fake, and they were never even broken up. As Spencer told the publication, ‘We were all getting paid to be people we weren’t for so long that you stop — there’s no line. The gauge is gone. The gray area is gone. We got so deep with how many storylines we had to do to continue the machine.’ And Heidi added, ‘So what was one more fake breakup.’

Heidi and Spencer, better known as Speidi, are practically the queen and king of fame chasing. In July 2023, they even started their own podcast, ‘Speidi’s 16 Minutes’, where they teach people how to be famous. In a joint statement, the couple said, ‘Heidi and I have always wanted to do a master class on being famous, but since their people never call us back, we’re taking it to this podcast which will be both educational and free for you to listen to. A win for everyone! We can’t wait to share this with you!’

The couple was making a sh*t amount of money and were multimillionaires by the time they were in their early 20’s from their time on ‘The Hills’ and beyond. Spencer revealed he was making up to $175,000 per episode, and the couple was making up to $2 million a year from paid appearances and photoshoots. But it all went to waste as they went broke just a few short years after ‘The Hills’ was cancelled. Spencer told In Touch Weekly in 2014, ‘Every time we’d go out to eat, we’d order $4,000 bottles of wine. Heidi was going to the mall and dropping $20,000 to $30,000 a day. We thought we were Jay Z and Beyoncé. He also told People At the time, ‘We were keeping up with the Joneses, but we were going against Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. We should have stayed in our reality-TV lane.’ They were previously warned about their unhealthy spending habits, but decided to avoid any advice given to them. When they appeared together on the reboot of ‘The Hills’ in 2019, they chronicled the same money mismanagement that they’d experienced. For instance, they were spending the same amount a family of four would spend on food when they were a family of 3 at the time. They were warned that their business was close to being closed due to mismanagement of money.

In season 6 of ‘The Hills’, there was one particular scene where Heidi and Spencer are arguing with Heidi’s sister, Holly. It was actually Spencer having a massive tantrum while fighting with Holly while Heidi was just listening and being in the middle of all of it. While he’s having his meltdown on Holly, Spencer is seen pressing a quartz crystal on his forehead for calmness. It was Speidi’s way of promoting something that’s called ‘crystal therapy’. Spencer went on to make an entire business out of his crystal collection. On his website, Pratt Daddy, he sells crystal pendants, bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and apparel. In 2017, Pratt told him Insider that crystals hold energy, and that they can amplify emotions to people who interact with them. Pratt also said, ‘My new competitor is Gwyneth Paltrow selling her $85 medicine bag of tumbled rocks, while I was shopping real crystals.’ Paltrow has sold crystals on her website, Goop, and Kim Kardashians is known to be a fan of crystals.

While starring on ‘The Hills: New Beginnings’, all Heidi could talk about was wanting to have another baby with Spencer. It seemed as though it was the only thing that was on her mind. The fact that she was having trouble conceiving seemed to have troubled her more than being told the news that her business was close to being shut down due to money mishandling. The news shocked her, of course, especially the fact that she and her family were overspending their money on food, but it wasn’t as bothersome to her as her wanting to have another baby. She couldn’t stop talking about wanting another baby. So much so that the topic became of the essence to her. She couldn’t, and wouldn’t stop talking about it; like word vomit. She’d even get into conflicts with other women around her who were pregnant, especially ones that were pregnant with their second child. It lowered her self-esteem, just like her surgery and money management.

My take on their money mismanagement is that they wanted to be ‘cool’ and ‘hip’. It’s not like they were willing to lose it all for it, but because they had so much money at such a young age, they didn’t realize that you can lose money the same way you got it. We didn’t see any of the other cast members lose their money so fast, or at all for that matter, and that’s because the rest of the cast didn’t have low self-esteem and a lack of self-worth as Heidi and Spencer did. They came from drastically different worlds. Heidi and Spencer got love and attention fast, and they were desperate to hold on to it. They were eager to be liked, and that’s why, in a nutshell, they made the decisions they made in their businesses and personal lives.

Over all, I think Heidi Montag is a good person. She was seen as a villain on ‘The Hills’ because that’s just how she was portrayed as per the fact that Lauren was the main b*tch in town. Lauren got into a massive fight with her, and we were all made to believe that Heidi was the villain in all of this, whereas Lauren was the innocent one. As adults watching the show we once adored, we realized that Heidi was never the villain to begin with. She came to LA as Lauren’s sidekick, but she had other aspirations and ambitions for herself; ones that were drastically different than Lauren’s. There were multiple main factors that led Heidi into a world where she didn’t know herself, questioned every decision she made, lacked her self-esteem and self-worth:

• Her toxic friendship with Lauren
• Not coming from wealth, unlike Lauren and her other friends
• Getting too much fame too soon
• Becoming a multimillionaire at a young age
• The need to be liked, both by her peers and the outside world
• Feeling too much pressure to be perfect
• Having a strict timeline and feeling like a failure when that timeline didn’t go accordingly
• Not taking care of her mental and physical health before anything else
• Not feeling supported enough by her peers and family, and the constant need for validation

And there you have it…

A lot of people believed that Spencer was the cause of all her problems. But in reality, he never was the problem. He was actually her biggest supporter, I think. It’s nice to have a partner who will have your back no matter what. That’s not to say that Spencer was perfect. He’s had his own share of weirdness, but he wasn’t the cause of his wife’s insecurities. I think what we can learn from Heidi’s journey is that we need to put ourselves first. No matter who we hurt or piss off in the process, we need to put ourselves first. Because if we don’t, we can end up torturing ourselves. We get so caught up in trying to please other people and making other people happy that we completely forget about ourselves.

With that said, we can start losing ourselves in the process. Our personal lives and our professional lives can suffer from it. Heidi once said, ‘I thought I was investing in myself and my brand, like Kim Kardashian.’ What she failed to realize is that she wasn’t investing in herself, but rather in other people – from Lauren to Jordan (her ex-boyfriend) to her friends to her fans, to her haters to her employees, to even her family. One Liam Payne, and you may or may not know him from One Direction, quote I really loved from the ‘Diary Of A CEO’ podcast is, ‘Investing in yourself means respecting yourself.’

BOOM!

The end….