A Satisfying conclusion and a clean arc. However, as Brittany Cartwright’s 2026 unfolds, the real story seems messier and more relatable than that. It’s the kind of thing that occurs when you’re going through a divorce, caring for a child with special needs, recuperating from surgery, and all of this while millions of strangers are making comments about your appearance on TV.
Cartwright, who gained notoriety on Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules and is still a cast member of The Valley, has been open about the weight she put on after giving birth to her son Cruz in April 2021. On reality TV, where cameras roll and viewers quickly form opinions, postpartum body changes are rarely discussed honestly. For Brittany, these changes included loose skin, a physical disconnect that can subtly undermine confidence over months or years, and diastasis recti, a separation of the abdominal muscles that is fairly common after pregnancy. Her already challenging emotional and physical time was made even more stressful by her divorce from Jax Taylor.
It’s not just the weight loss figures that make 2026 seem like a turning point. That’s how she arrived. Cartwright called the body shaming she experienced this year “intense” on her podcast, When Reality Hits, a term that seems purposefully understated. She said, “I don’t understand it… I don’t know why people are attacking me so hard,” when The Valley’s most recent season started airing earlier this year. It’s difficult to ignore how frequently women’s bodies are the focus of public commentary on reality TV. Cartwright was being criticized not for her choices or plots, but rather for the amount of screen time she occupied.
However, what followed was less foreseeable. Instead of withdrawing, she turned the online cacophony into something more akin to rebellion. She had a mommy makeover in October 2025 with Beverly Hills surgeons Drs. John Layke and Payman Danielpour, which included a tummy tuck, liposuction, abdominal reconstruction, and a breast lift with smaller implants.
She was clear about why she didn’t want to live up to anyone else’s expectations. “I completed this task for myself. It had to do with my self-assurance,” she remarked. “I was torn down in my last relationship… and I had lost a lot of my confidence, so I really wanted to get my confidence back.”
It takes months to recover from such surgery, and Cartwright, as usual, was transparent about the process. She was several months post-op and prepared to move forward by the time she partnered with the telehealth company Fridays, which provides GLP-1 weight loss medications. GLP-1s, which include drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic, function by imitating a gut hormone that controls blood sugar and appetite. At first, she was dubious. “I was worried,” she acknowledged. However, she reported that the weight was beginning to change by the third month. She reported feeling like herself once more by the fourth month. She lost two dress sizes and twenty more pounds by the middle of 2026.
She released a video in July that showcased her collaboration with Fridays and included footage of her exercising with kettlebells and dumbbells alongside side-by-side progress photos. “I finally got my sparkle back,” she wrote in her caption. Naturally, the question of whether the surgery merited the praise was raised in the comment section. She explained that the mommy makeover and the GLP-1 results were distinct accomplishments and that both helped her get to where she is now in a straightforward and non-defensive manner.
As The Valley continues to film and Brittany Cartwright’s divorce from Jax Taylor proceeds, it’s still unclear exactly where her story will go from here. However, there’s a feeling that 2026 has changed her in ways other than the physical. She has stated that she intends to look completely different when she attends the Season 3 reunion. The true transformation appears to have occurred more subtly, somewhere between the surgeon’s table and the fourth month of a medication she nearly didn’t try, regardless of whether that reunion moment goes as planned.
