Gorilla Glue Girl: Tessica Brown slams critics calling hair disaster fake as she 'never thought it'll go viral'
Tessica Brown, who was dubbed "Gorilla Glue Girl" after her TikTok hair disaster, has lashed out at trolls who claimed she staged the whole thing to garner attention.
The 40-year-old went viral on social media after she revealed she had failed to remove the super-strong adhesive from her scalp for nearly a month. Several celebrities empathized with her predicament and she flew to Los Angeles earlier this week to accept an offer of $12,500 worth of plastic surgery for free.
However, Brown was rather perturbed by online trolls who claimed she was faking her situation on video-blogging site TikTok for social media fame. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, she said she never thought her video would go viral. “The reason I went to the internet, because I never was gonna take it to social media, was because I didn’t know what else to do," Brown told ET. “And I know somebody out there could have told me something. I didn’t think for one second, when I got up the next morning, it was gonna be everywhere.”
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Brown said she received so much hate online that she hesitated to accept several offers of help that came her way. “A lot of people want to give me help, but the reason I wasn’t accepting it was because I don’t want people to be like, ‘Oh, that’s why she did it,'" Brown said.
The mother-of-five from Louisiana is now said to be recuperating well after undergoing a four-hour surgery to remove the glue. As reported by The Sun, LA plastic surgeon Dr Michael Obeng offered to treat her for free after witnessing her predicament online.
Brown was placed under light anesthesia for the first round of a three-day procedure designed to free her scalp at Obeng's Beverly Hills clinic, where the doctor created a solution to dissolve polyurethane, the main ingredient in Gorilla Glue. "Initially I thought it was a joke!" Obeng told TMZ. "We figured out the science of how to break it down."
The plastic surgeon explained how they used a combination of medical-grade adhesive remover, aloe vera, olive oil, and a dash of acetone to remove the glue from Brown's scalp. According to The Sun, Obeng first tested his concoction on a dummy with real human hair and extensions. He then sprayed the solution on Brown's hair and combed it through.
In footage obtained by TMZ, Brown appeared relieved after the procedure and immediately reached to feel her hair. "I can scratch it. I wish I'd have waited for my little sister to cut my ponytail off!" she remarked. "It's over... over...over," she trailed off in celebration.
According to Obeng, Brown's styling experiment was "no joke." He said she was "very very lucky she did not sustain a lot of injuries to her scalp."
The surgeon explained how the grueling episode had taken a huge mental and physical toll on her.
"The many nights that she couldn't, sleep, the anxiety. Right before surgery, we had to give her a medication to relax her," Obeng said of Brown. "She's been through a lot," he added.