The Bachelorette alum Gabby Windey has opened up about a scary Botox experience she went through to hide the wrinkles in her neck.
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“When I was a Broncos cheerleader, our arms were always up with the pom poms… and I noticed in all the pictures we’d get back that whenever I’d raise my arms above my head, I would get a lot of wrinkles on my neck,” Gabby said during the June 6 episode of her “Long Winded” podcast.
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The Bachelor 26 alum joked about how she looked like “a bulldog” or “a pug” when she was cheering because of the “big, thick wrinkles” in her neck.
“I have a long neck, and I don’t have flexible shoulders. So I think all the tension goes to my neck,” Gabby explained. “It’s probably genetic.”
Gabby, who was a nurse before becoming a member of the Broncos cheer squad from 2016 to 2020, started wondering if Botox injections in the neck would help her “tragedy” of a situation.
“I didn’t see it in the other girls. I was pretty self-conscious,” Gabby said.
Gabby — who will be competing on Season 3 of The Traitors on Peacock — recalled consulting with an aesthetician for the Broncos who gave the women “cheap Botox,” like $8 per unit.
“You bet your ass I’m there and I’m square!” Gabby quipped.
The woman allegedly recommended that Gabby consult with a surgeon, who ultimately advised Gabby to undergo a neck lift.
But Gabby acknowledged that going under the knife is always the best or smartest way to fix one’s appearance.
“I was, like, 27! A neck lift?! This just went from bad to worse,” Gabby lamented of her experience in a small clinic in Denver.
“I thought I was just going to get a little bit of [the Botox], but you just went from A to Z! I said, ‘Well, when can we do that?’ And they said, ‘You’re going to have to wait for your skin to get even saggier. It’s just too tight right now.'”
Gabby said her situation was “very upsetting” to the surgeon and his or her staff, and that they were “very concerned” about her looks.
“Most people are like, ‘Who the f-ck cares? We can’t even tell,'” Gabby said. “[The surgeon] was like, ‘Okay, I think you’re a candidate [for neck Botox]. I usually only do this in older women, but you look in desperate need.'”
Gabby said she “didn’t ask questions” so she wouldn’t scare or talk herself out of the Botox procedure. She therefore went through with it.
“He fills up the syringes and blasts my ass all around the neck. It is pretty tender, and I was like, ‘Oh f-ck, okay, we’ll see.’ I was an active Broncos cheerleader at the time, and three days later… [at] practice, I felt like my neck could swivel off its axis at any point in time.”
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Gabby worried that “one wrong hair flip” could injure her because she had “lost all muscle contraction” in the front of her neck.
“It was a fast song, and I was like, ‘Holy f-ck, I’ve got to get through this!’ I put my head down and [I thought], ‘I can’t make any complaints. No one can know the depths I’ve [gone] to [so] I wouldn’t look like a wrinkly dog,” Gabby recalled.
“I felt like, at any second, my head could completely fall off its neck and twist around. But I kept dancing and was nailing the choreographer — headless.”
Gabby said no one noticed that she was struggling but she asked a friend to check her pulse every 20 to 30 minutes during the practice just to make sure she was still alive.
“Somehow, I thought it was going to kill me… I was like, ‘I’m definitely f-cked,” Gabby admitted.
“My neck was compromised for two to three weeks. I will say it worked. I don’t know if that’s fortune or unfortunate, but not only did I lose complete contraction of my neck, I lost my capabilities to swallow correctly and fully.”
Gabby, however, found out that she could force herself to swallow if she tucked her chin and closed off her trachea.
“So I couldn’t swallow for weeks because I was aspirating. I could barely eat food and I couldn’t take big gulps,” Gabby confessed.
“I was like, ‘Holy sh-t, is my swallow ever going to come back?’… And then not only that, but my voice dropped, like, two to 10 octaves, which I didn’t hate. It kind of sounded like I had a cold. It was kind of sexy, raspy — but almost a little too deep.”
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Gabby joked that while she’s not a bass, the procedure brought her voice “down low” and her voice was nearly unrecognizable.
However, the results slowly wore off.
“Have I gone back? You bet your ass,” Gabby revealed. “But something that actually works better is Botox in the traps. I do have so much tension, and it kind of just releases it,” Gabby concluded.
“And the back of my neck was in pain as all of my muscles were reallocating and relearning how to hold a head up… Ever since then, I haven’t gone back to a surgeon… A nurse practitioner is a little more conservative.”
Botox isn’t the only cosmetic procedure The Bachelor alum has tried. Gabby also opened up about having lip filler — and ultimately dissolving it — in a March TikTok video.
After failing to win Clayton Echard’s heart on The Bachelor’s 26th season, Gabby co-starred on The Bachelorette’s nineteenth season alongside Rachel Recchia.
Gabby got engaged to her The Bachelorette winner Erich Schwer during the September 2022 finale, but she announced their amicable breakup just two short months later during an episode of Dancing with the Stars’ 31st season.
“I do feel like [I was a] little caught up in ‘Bachelor world.’ I think it is a little dated,” Gabby told Us Weekly at the time about accepting Erich Schwer’s marriage proposal on the show.
When Gabby and Erich’s engagement ended, Gabby said she and her former fiance weren’t “in sync” or “the best match” for each other.
Gabby then publicly came out as queer in August 2023, and she’s now happily dating comedian Robby Hoffman.
Gabby will be competing on Season 3 of The Traitors along with 20 other reality TV star on Peacock — including Survivor’s Tony Vlachos and Bachelor in Paradise’s Wells Adams.
The contestants will compete in a series of missions with the objective of earning a cash prize of up to $250,000. However, hidden amongst the Faithful contestants are the Traitors, whose goal is to eliminate the Faithful and claim the prize for themselves.
“Under the cover of darkness, the Traitors ‘murder’ contestants one by one, but if the Faithful can banish all the Traitors before the end of the game, they’ll split the incredible prize,” according to Peacock.
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About The Author:
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.