‘These are my choices for me’

Kelly Ripa is keeping it real.

The talk show host, 51, is used to opening up emotionally on “Live with Kelly and Ryan” every morning — and seeing herself on camera every day.

This caused some insecurities, she said in a new interview with People discussing her forthcoming book, “Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories,” which comes out Sept. 28.

“For me, it was just more of my comfort level. If I worked off camera, I would not wash my hair with regularity or wear makeup but when I started to see things that I didn’t like, I thought, well, the next turtleneck is going to have two eye holes,” she said.

Instead, she started getting wrinkle-smoothing injections, and hasn’t looked back since.

“I’m not saying you should let people bully you into cosmetic procedures. These are my choices for me,” she said.

In 2020, Ripa even joked about her “Botox deficiency” during lockdown, taking viewers behind the scenes as she got jabbed on camera.

“As I describe in the book, being open and honest about cosmetic procedures, I’ve always done on the show. I’ve always talked about it open and honestly because I thought, really honestly, at 40 years old that I was the only person aging and I couldn’t figure out why,” Ripa said in a video accompanying her People piece.

“I kept saying, ‘I need to quit my job because … it’s too early in the morning, it’s too much reading, it’s too much work, it’s a lot of anxiety, it’s too much makeup and it’s weighing on me and I’m just looking older than everybody else.’”

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But rather than finding a new career, Ripa began dabbling in injectables, and discussed her experience on-air.

“There are procedures you can have done. And then once you start talking about what you’re having done, people become very open about what they’re having done and then you start trading doctors,” she said.

In fact, there’s no gatekeeping here — the blond bombshell said she even provided a list of her own doctors at the end of the book, so fellow New Yorkers can reach out and book their own appointments.

“If there’s somebody you see who you think is good, you should be generous with that information,” Ripa said.