When the Dolls toured, performing hits such as Don’t Cha (with the lyrics: “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?”), Bachar would step forward at the end to address the audience.  “I’d say: 'You may not know, but I was born with a cleft palate and I have come from a place where I really felt unpretty. But I want you to know that everybody has something that makes you different, that’s what makes you special and unique.’ The crowd would go absolutely wild. It gives me shivers just thinking about it. Those were my stand-out moments.”  Now 38, Bachar grew up in Los Angeles. She was born with a cleft palate and lip, meaning her top lip was split open and the bones in her jaw and around her mouth didn’t grow normally.  “From the age of six months to 16, I had an operation every year to repair it. Basically I grew up in the hospital. Doctors would pull the skin between my lip and nose together and stitch it up,” she says.  “It made my nose flattened and my lips pinched, so doctors were constantly doing revisions to make my face appear more normal. At one point, a bone was taken from my hip and put in my palate. The procedures were very painful, and as I was allergic to anaesthetic, they took months to recover from.  “After an operation, you had to be strapped down so you didn’t scratch your face and infect it. After I turned three, parents weren’t allowed to stay overnight with you in the hospital, but my father was so worried I’d wake up and be frightened, that he hid under my bed and slept on the cold floor so he could be there if I needed him in the night.  “There were constant issues with my nose, ear and throat. I was ill all the time and I always had tubes in my ears for infections.”  At school, she was teased. “It was very hard. My mother says I came home crying a lot. Kids can be brutally honest and they can also be overly mean. They were always pointing and asking: 'What’s that?’ I got tired of explaining about the cleft palate, so I used to just say I fell and hit myself on the table.”  Sitting in a cafe in Kensington during a visit to London, Bachar is certainly far from ugly now. She’s tall, with striking looks – rather than a Barbie-like image – and a mane of dyed red hair that was her Pussycat Dolls trademark. Only a tiny scar from the top of her lip to her left nostril hints at what she endured.  As a result of the cleft palate, the growth of her upper jawbone was stunted. By the age of 14, Bachar had a huge underbite. “I felt uglier than ever, it was very traumatic, I became very inhibited, I didn’t want to talk to people or draw attention to myself in any way.”  Her salvation came through performing. Her parents were both in showbusiness – her Israeli father danced in films with Elvis Presley and her Dutch-Indonesian mother was a model and dance teacher.  When she was five, her mother enrolled Bachar in a theatre group. “I loved being on stage, because the make-up camouflaged you and you could lose yourself in another, imaginary world. I felt I was standing out, but in a good way. What was much more intimidating was talking to someone face-to-face, seeing their expression as they registered my face was different.”  When Bachar was seven, her mother took her to a talent agent. “He looked at me and said: 'Don’t get your hopes up.’ I’ll never forget the disappointment. But I came away thinking: 'I’ll show you’. I was more determined than ever to prove everyone wrong.  “My mother reassured me that things would improve with more surgery, so I tried to be hopeful. Before each surgery, I’d tell myself I’d come out perfect, but I was always disappointed. Being perfect meant not having a cleft lip and it seemed I always would.”  When Bachar stopped growing at 16, a facial surgeon was able to operate on her upper jaw. It took five hours and involved cutting above the gums over her top teeth, to bring the jaw forward an inch, so it was level with the lower jaw. After the procedure, her jaw was wired shut for a fortnight so it could heal. “I didn’t care – I was dying to see my new face.” When the swelling went down, she was given a mirror. “I was in shock – I was actually pretty. I started sobbing, I had the face I’d always wanted.”  But then came another, unexpected blow. When the wires were removed and Bachar began talking, her speech was nearly incomprehensible. “They had accidentally cut through my vocals, so now I had a speech impediment, talking without any defined consonants.”  Initially, it was thought the damage was permanent and Bachar would never speak properly, or sing again. “My mother and I were devastated. When I went back to school, I hardly spoke, I was so embarrassed about my impediment.” But six months later, Bachar’s cords were repaired in another operation.  “I finally felt I was truly whole. When I returned to school, I looked so different, no one recognised me. They thought I was Carmit’s younger sister. My final year at school was amazing: I went to the prom with the guy I’d liked for two years and I was singing and performing at clubs.”  Bachar had a little more cosmetic surgery – permanently tattooing her lipline to emphasise her mouth, which was slightly undefined after the surgery, and laser resurfacing the skin around her scar to make it smoother. She went on to dance with Beyoncé, Janet and Michael Jackson and Ricky Martin. She also spent 13 years in the Pussycat Dolls, before pursuing a solo career.  Throughout, she has worked as an ambassador for cleft-palate charities, visiting developing countries to raise awareness of the condition that affects one in 600 children.  “I’ve visited countries like Bolivia, where I’ll never forget one woman, who was 21 with a child of her own, whose father made her stay outside the house in the fields because he was embarrassed to be around her. A 45-minute procedure can change the life of someone like that forever.”  She now has her own daughter, 18-month-old Keala Rose. “During pregnancy, I was so scared because no one knows for sure what causes cleft palates, whether it’s hereditary or not. I didn’t want my daughter suffering like I did. When she was born fine, I couldn’t wait to kiss her cherub lips, to revel in her perfection, something I never felt I had, and there was some redemption there for me.”  Still, Bachar has no regrets. “I’m proud of my scar,” she says. “To me it is a battle wound, it made me strong. I’m grateful for what I suffered because it built my character. I really was the ugly duckling, but I came through.”  For more information on cleft lips and palates, visit the Cleft Lip and Palate Association at clapa.com
Before joining the all-girl Pussycat Dolls pop group, Carmit Bachar endured   years of operations and teasing