Dr. Sheila Nazarian Won’t Be Silenced

When Dr. Sheila Nazarian started standing up for her values online in 2021, she didn’t do it for the attention, praise or followers. After all, she already had a successful plastic surgery office in Beverly Hills, a hit show on Netflix and hundreds of thousands of fans. She didn’t have to say anything.

But she couldn’t keep quiet anymore. She saw the attacks happening in Israel and the anti-Zionism and antisemitism that was spreading around the world on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. So she used her huge following to stand up for her people and her values. 

She started posting in defense of the Jewish state. One tweet from this past March attracted widespread attention, appearing on many Twitter and Instagram feeds. It read, “IF YOU ARE SILENT WHEN TERRORISTS MURDER ISRAELIS, STAY SILENT WHEN ISRAEL DEFENDS ITSELF.” It received over 2,800 retweets and 12,500 likes on Twitter alone.

“The first day I became vocal on social media, I dropped 3,000 followers,” Nazarian said. “There was a shift in who was following me. But I learned you can’t have people absolutely love you by being non-polarizing. You have to accept that some people will hate you. I’d rather surround myself with people who have the same core values as me than have people who like me for the fake me.”

“If my life is fruitless, it doesn’t matter who praises me. If my life is fruitful, it doesn’t matter who criticizes me.”

Nazarian often makes statements of this nature on her pages. She recently posted, “If my life is fruitless, it doesn’t matter who praises me. If my life is fruitful, it doesn’t matter who criticizes me” and “There is only one way to avoid criticism: say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”

Nazarian, who, with her mother, escaped Iran as a child, has been through a lot. Given some of her harrowing experiences, she feels invincible. She’s a survivor. 

She was born in New York and returned with her family to Iran in 1979, when the revolution started. “It was normal then, and I was busy going to school, but my parents were seeing what was happening behind the scenes,” she said. “If a Jew got valedictorian, they wouldn’t give it to them. They’d give it to the next person who wasn’t Jewish.”

Her father, a pathologist, ran the Shah’s heart hospital in Iran, so he was always looking behind his back. 

“He said there was no opportunity or growth there,” said Nazarian. “He didn’t want to live somewhere where he was constantly under threat.”

Once the Iran-Iraq War started — and it was happening literally at their doorstep — it was clear that Nazarian’s family had to escape. 

“There were bombs flying everywhere,” she said. “We’d watch them go off. One landed near our home and my dad said it was time to get out.”

Leaving would be tricky, though, so Nazarian’s father thought of a plan: He said he would be attending a conference to speak, and he’d hand over his wife’s and children’s passports in order to guarantee that he’d come back to Iran. But of course, that wasn’t going to happen. 

Instead, the family worked with HIAS to escape. They went to a bazaar and were put in the back of a car that looked like a hearse. They were each curled into a fetal position in the bottom of the vehicle and covered with burlap and corn so that they were concealed. While driving through the desert at night, the border police started shooting at their car.

“There was a ravine, and we went over it,” Nazarian said. “Border patrol was too scared to go over it because it was dangerous, so they left us alone.”

The family ended up in Pakistan. From there, they went to Vienna, reunited with her father and then came to the United States. They settled in Los Angeles among a large population of Persian Jews.

When Nazarian arrived, she was in the first grade. Though she worked hard and did well academically, it wasn’t an easy transition. 

“I was really nerdy and didn’t fit in,” she said. “I was exceedingly skinny and got teased a lot. I switched schools. I wasn’t popular.”

However, she didn’t let the bullies affect her schoolwork. 

“I was in a gifted program,” she said. “One of the things that gave me confidence was my intelligence and doing well in school. There was a self-imposed pressure to excel.”

Nazarian ended up at the prestigious Harvard-Westlake High School, then went to Columbia College at Columbia University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the University of Southern California, where she studied plastic surgery and medical management. 

The doctor, who is also a wife and mother of three, runs a successful practice in Beverly Hills, which landed her a Netflix show called “Skin Decision.” It premiered in 2020 and focused on helping people bring out their best selves; it wasn’t the run of the mill plastic surgery program. In one episode, an ex-model who was slashed in the face gets help in order to improve her appearance and feel confident again. The show was nominated for a 2021 Emmy in the Outstanding Lifestyle Series category. 

“It showed my industry for what it is and the real reason people get plastic surgery,” Nazarian said. “It’s not a circus show that’s demeaning to the patients. This is their journey.”

It was through the show that Nazarian first gained prominence and built up her social media presence. While she has plenty of posts about plastic surgery, she also found her activist voice online in early 2021.

She had been protesting the California ethnic studies curriculum, which some called antisemitic, in front of the Federal Building in LA. As a mother of children in California schools, Nazarian was concerned about the curriculum. 

“The protest was in January, before the Gaza War,” said Nazarian. “Persian Jews are pretty traumatized because we’re used to not letting anyone know we’re Jewish. I put a cardboard cutout of a menorah on our gate during Hanukkah, and my husband asked me what I was doing. As soon as I finished talking at the protest, my husband took me out of there. My family asked me what I’m doing.”

Like other Persian Jews, Nazarian feels deeply connected to Israel. When she was 16, she studied there for six weeks as a Bronfman fellow. She held her daughter’s bat mitzvah in Israel two years ago and will be going back this summer with the Young Professionals Organization for a three-day meeting in Jerusalem.

“Israel is doing a lot of good in the Middle East as far as keeping Iran in check when a lot of other places won’t. The Abraham Accords were beautiful.”

“Israel exists for us and everyone else as someplace we can return to,” she said. “Israel is doing a lot of good in the Middle East as far as keeping Iran in check when a lot of other places won’t. The Abraham Accords were beautiful.”

Along with pro-Israel and pro-Jewish posts, Nazarian expresses her conservative views on gender, gun ownership and wokeness on her feeds.

“Conservative values and Jewish activism definitely gets you some hate on social media,” she said. “One morning, I woke up, and my TikTok was erased. I got it back up in three hours because I know people, but this is what happens to Jewish accounts. They just get deleted. There are a lot more antisemitic people in the world than Jews.”

Nazarian deals with hate on a near-constant basis. She randomly gets one-star Yelp reviews on her practice’s page from people who are not her patients, and she’s received death threats online.

“One morning, I woke up, and my TikTok was erased…this is what happens to Jewish accounts. They just get deleted. There are a lot more antisemitic people in the world than Jews.”

“I became very close friends with the LAPD,” she said. “I have an armed guard at my home. I armed myself.” 

Coming from Iran, Nazarian is very proud to be an American, and she talks frequently about her patriotism online. For Memorial Day, she posted a photo of her husband and her, saying, “Happy Memorial Day from two very grateful Americans. We don’t take for granted our freedoms and are thankful to those who have sacrificed to make America the great nation that it is.” 

“It’s very frustrating when people who are so limited in their life experience start saying things about America when they really don’t know what the alternative is,” she said. 

It is in America that Nazarian made it. The businesswoman and mother is not only a prominent influencer, she also runs The Skin Spot, a skincare and wellness website where her medical-grade products are available, a spa, a business mindset training seminar and The Nazarian Institute, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that is dedicated to showing medical professionals the best ways to grow their personal and professional lives. 

Nazarian’s days are packed. She wakes up at six in the morning, goes to the gym with her husband, a neurosurgeon, and then takes her kids to school. Throughout the week, she meets with employees at her businesses, operates on patients and does virtual patient visits from home. On weekends, she unwinds by going to temple with her family, walking and visiting Lake Tahoe. 

“In the last few years, temple was the only place where I could shut my brain off,” she said. “It was almost like a meditation to go every Saturday.”

Nazarian may be thriving in her career, but it’s her family who is the center of her world. She said that with her activism, she is showing her children how to be strong.

“I’m modeling bravery and courage. I want my children to listen to their own voices. I’m making sure they are well adjusted and feel loved and they are stable and flourishing as well. I’m a tough person, and I’m tough with them as far as expectations, but it’s very important that they feel confidence and self-love as well.” 

Nazarian hopes that by standing up to bullies and speaking her truth, she can combat the anti-free speech movement that’s happening in this country. 

“People are afraid to speak up and say ‘These are my values,’” she said. “I’m like, oh my God, this is America. This is what happened in Iran. If you said what you felt you’d get kidnapped or killed. You need to be able to say what you think.” 

Though she faces harassment and threats, it’s not going to stop Nazarian.

“We can’t be silent, because if people only hear one side of the story enough times, it becomes true, no matter how false it is,” she said. “I’m not going to back down.”