I was bullied for my looks but plastic surgery turned me into the Alan Sugar of stripping, says Megan Barton-Hanson
AFTER being relentlessly bullied for her looks and barely being able to afford a train ticket to work, Megan Barton-Hanson finally decided that enough was enough.
At the age of just 19, the Love Island star, now 30, went under the knife for a double surgery - a nose job and a breast augmentation.
And Megan says braving the knife helped the cash roll in - going from a shamed teen to the "Alan Sugar of strip clubs".
The blonde beauty, who rose to fame on the 2018 series of the ITV dating show, revealed all when she sat down with dating expert Paul Carrick Brunson for his We Need To Talk podcast.
Megan opened up on a secret pregnancy after she was raped by an abusive ex and her days of being tormented by bullies at school.
She confessed that she was ridiculed for her appearance - the size of her nose and her sticky-out ears - and was also “slut-shamed”.
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On one occasion, what she thought was an innocent, white lie made her school years a “misery”.
She admitted: “Kids are cruel. A guy who was in Year 11 was talking to me, he asked me to send him a sexually explicit video but I was too scared and thank god I didn’t.
“Didn’t send it to him and he goes ‘I bet you haven’t even masturbated, have you?’
“At this point I hadn’t, but to seem older I was like ‘yeah, I have’. The next day, my life was a misery, for the next year, until he left school.”
Megan’s friends were left “disgusted” by her and “barely wanted to hang out” with her.
She was constantly pointed at by bullies in the school hallway and said: “It was hell.”
But after years of being tormented, Megan took the plunge and made a big decision for herself.
Whilst still a teenager, Megan craved financial success, and thought that getting surgery would provide that.
Paul, 50, asked: “You’ve had your ears pinned back, first procedure, then you have your breasts done. What drove you to get your breasts done at that age?”
I wanted to be a glamour model, a Page 3 girl
Megan Barton-Hanson
Megan, from Essex, admitted: “I’ll be brutally honest - money.
“I had no issues, I was quite body confident with my natural boobs but there was this girl and she was on social media making a lot of money basically doing Page 3, but she was her own boss.
“I remember saying to my first boyfriend, ‘babe, she’s making so much money, don’t you think I’m prettier, I could definitely do that if I had bigger t**s’.
“I wanted my nose done, that was another thing from school kids would pick on.
“I hate being put to sleep so I’ll get my t**s done, the nose done, all in one and I can make so much money, either on social media, or back then, Page 3 was still a thing.
“I wanted to be a glamour model, a Page 3 girl.
“I was working in London and it was minimum wage, barely affording my train ticket to commute from Essex to London.
“I was like, this can't be what life is, surely.”
What else did Megan share on Paul's podcast?
WHILST chatting to Paul Brunson, Megan revealed that she is a survivor of repeated cases of domestic abuse.
Megan confirmed that she fell pregnant years before Love Island by an older lover after he removed his condom without her consent, also known as stealthing.
Following a termination, on the journey home from the clinic, Megan, 30, says her partner suddenly “switched” and became violently abusive.
Opening up to relationship coach Paul Carrick Brunson, Megan said: “He was like, ‘You're disgusting. You just killed our baby’.
“Then he's like, ‘You make me sick’, then he got the seat belt, wrapped it around my neck, bit my nose - this was post nose job - and said, ‘Think you're pretty with that new nose?', bit it, started filming me and goes, ‘Cry, b***h. Go and tell the camera what you've just done’.
“I was in so much shock, I couldn't even have tears. I couldn't breathe.”
Host Brunson, 50, pointed out that the terrifying ordeal had come after an episode of rape - because stealthing is considered rape under UK law.
Continuing her recollection, Megan revealed how her ex threatened to murder her before giving her “ten seconds to run” to safety.
She shared: “We're on a motorway, cars are speeding past at 70mph.
"I thought, even if I try (to run) it’s just going to anger him more because he's definitely going to catch me, so I just stood there frozen."
The star then confessed she did her “best acting” to persuade the man to “calm down” before finally dropping her home.
But later, the “nightmare” continued when the boyfriend arrived at Megan’s parents’ home armed with a crowbar.
He “squared up” to her marine biologist dad Kevin then “strangled” her mum Justine and, as the family fled in their car.
He then hurled the crowbar through the rear window, with Megan on the back seat.
She shared: “I thought he’d literally kill me, the way he was. He was acting literally psychotic."
Bravely, Megan later told the police of her ordeal and subsequently testified against her ex in a crown court trial where he was sentenced to a month and a half in prison.
Megan was working as a Legal PA at the time, but decided to invest in breast surgery.
After this, she began to monetise on her new look through scantily clad pictures on Instagram and quickly racked up 200,000 followers before her Love Island fame.
I thought I’d made it. I thought I was Alan Sugar
Megan Barton-Hanson
Six years on, she now has 1.4 million followers, as she shared: “I’ve got a lot to thank for Instagram, just posting more sexy pictures. The likes started growing.”
As her social media account took off, the reality TV star then turned to a strip club to further boost her finances.
She explained: “I was earning really bad money at the law firm, it wasn’t worth the hours I was putting in. I had no money to spend at the weekend.
“I was investing in my looks but what I was making on Instagram wasn’t enough to survive on. I’d walk past the strip club and the girls outside looked so happy, they were laughing. They were glamorous as f**k.
“I didn't even tell my parents, I just walked in and said ‘hi, can I have a job?’
It was really freeing. They were some of the best memories of my life, working in that strip club
Megan Barton-Hanson
“I’d never stepped foot in a strip club, I just knew they looked happy and like they had loads of money, and that was what I wanted.
“I was being sexualised by the trainee solicitors, the solicitors. The way they would look at me, the little things they would say, so in my mind, if you’re gonna sexualise me when I’m dressed in a pencil skirt and tights on minimum wage, I’m gonna go and be sexualised where I can make so much money and I can be my own boss. So that’s what I did.
“For the first year, I thought I’d made it. I thought I was Alan Sugar.”
As well as cashing in as a stripper, describing herself as the “Alan Sugar of strip clubs”, Megan also found happiness and peace in her new performing job.
She beamed: “It was really freeing. They were some of the best memories of my life, working in that strip club.
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“It gave me a sisterhood I’d never had with girls. Growing up, when the girls ostracised me, for no fault of my own, for being bullied by a much older boy…these girls could tell, I was very geeky and shy.
“They were so lovely. I’d never felt that sisterhood, ever in my life, it was lovely.”