ASK Roxy Jacenko if she’s had a nose job or a breast enhancement and she’ll tell you straight up — yes. Ask her why she had veneers put on her teeth recently and she’ll laugh as she recounts the story of face planting in the bath after one too many drinks.
Love her or loathe her, there is something refreshingly honest about the 38-year-old PR queen.
In an industry that requires her to always present the picture-perfect front, the Sydney mother of two is happy to own her story — the good and the bad.
There is no shortage of drama in the businesswoman’s life: in the past two years alone she has overcome breast cancer, her husband being jailed over insider trading, allegations she cheated on him while he was in prison and a bitter public dispute with a former employee.
Then there are the constant criticisms about Jacenko’s parenting of six-year-old Pixie and four-year-old Hunter.
Sometimes fuelled by her own Instagram posts, which she says are a true insight into her life, critics have attacked Jacenko for letting her children use devices at the dinner table, letting Hunter stay up until 11pm, letting her then five-year-old daughter drink milk out of a baby’s bottle and for splashing out on a first birthday party to the tune of $30,000.
Only last week Jacenko posted a video of Hunter where she asks him, “What do you like to drink Hunter?” and he answers, “Coke.”
Then she asks, “And what does Pixie like to have?” to which he answers “Caprioska.”
It was like pulling the pin and throwing out the grenade, and she knows it.
“If people ask me a question I’ll answer it,” the blonde beauty tells BW Magazine.
“I am an open book and I’m happy to own it. I think it’s refreshing. Everyone is so careful with what they say or what they reveal.
“Yes my life is played out on Instagram but what you see is reality, you see all of it and not just the fun bits. If I’ve got an IV in my arm because I’ve had nose surgery and it’s gone awfully wrong and I’ve ended up with a blood infection trying to make my Jewish nose half the size, I’m happy to own it.
“If someone asks me if my nose is real, I’ll say, ‘Absolutely not you should have seen it before, it would enter the room before me,’ and if someone asks me if I’ve fixed my boobs, I tell them I have because I had boobs the size of sultanas before that, which were most unflattering in a swimsuit.
“I like to be real. There’s nothing worse than when you read articles about people refuting claims that they’ve fixed this or fixed that. There’s nothing wrong with cosmetic surgery. If you’re not happy with something about yourself, what’s wrong with changing it?
“I think there’s something quite refreshing about being honest and not taking yourself too seriously.”
One area where Jacenko does take herself seriously is in business. The woman who claims she scored zero out of 100 in a maths exam at school and who graduated with no academic credits is a juggernaut in the business world.
She established her company, Sweaty Betty PR, at the age of 24. Now it is an empire that also includes social influencer business The Ministry of Talent, her daughter’s successful hair bow company Pixies Bows (which hits Myer next month), and the newest addition to her portfolio, content creation agency Social Union. All up her empire is reputed to have a turnover of about $13 million.
As a successful and plain-speaking businesswoman who is also a dedicated mother (she vows never to miss a school event), she is in demand as a spokeswoman for several brands, including Toni & Guy, Birkenhead Point Shopping Centre and beauty brands ENJO and DU-IT. She travels Australia for her business seminars, In Conversation, and has written three novels.
In May, almost a year after he was released from Cooma Correctional Centre, Jacenko’s husband Oliver Curtis joined her business as group director.
“When he got out of jail on June 23 last year, one of the first things I said to him was the door is always open for you,” she says.
“Imagine walking out of jail and not knowing what you’re going to do, because the reality is you can’t answer an ad on Seek and go and apply for a job with ease.
“I guess I’m lucky that I have a relationship where we are like friends, and I have no problem saying that. I’m not a lovey-dovey person, I’m very transactionary. We get on wonderfully, we have a great relationship, he’s a wonderful father to the kids.
“Are we going to squabble? Absolutely. I mean we squabble on the way to work because he drives like a grandmother, I mean seriously the guy needs to learn to drive like Lewis Hamilton, time is money!
“Yeah, we’re going to argue and I’m going to dislike things he does and he’ll dislike things I do, but the reality of it is there’ll be a lot of good that comes with it.”
It’s a long way from where the pair were 18 months ago, when photos emerged in the media of Jacenko kissing her ex-boyfriend, Nabil Gazal.
Speaking out about the incident later, she told News Corp it was the result of being “drunk and stupid and mucking around”.
Not surprisingly, Jacenko says the year Curtis spent in jail, during which she was also diagnosed with breast cancer, was “a nightmare”.
“Yes, I had cancer, yes my husband went to jail and I lived a life for 12 months that was particularly unhealthy, I literally did not eat,” she says.
“I was doing radiation every day, I’d had a partial removal and I was eating six cooked tuna mini rolls a day and I wasn’t hungry. I was running on adrenaline and I was fixated on getting skinnier and skinnier and if I had a four-pack I had to make it a six-pack.
“It was absolute stupidity, I didn’t live smartly. But it was never an option to curl up in the corner and not get up. There was one time I remember, on a Saturday, and I was like, ‘I’m so miserable, I’m not getting out of bed,’ and then I told myself, ‘Get your shit together and get out of bed.’
“I felt my responsibility was not just to my kids, but to my business as well, my clients and my staff. The train driver needed to be there to drive the train, you have to put your shit in your pocket and keep going.”
And while she denies that year changed her, she admits it did change her marriage.
“We had a marriage for five years,” she says, then changes tack, adding: “We didn’t really have a marriage. (Oliver) had a trial hanging over his head which had been hanging there for some 10 years prior to me meeting him and life was very challenging. He was a stick figure in comparison to how he should have looked, he had immense pressure.
“Life is very different now, our relationship is completely different. He is a person who has a smile.”
Another tough part of that year was being a single mother. Jacenko says there were several incidents where Pixie would come home upset at barbs children would throw at her in the playground about her jailed father.
But in true Jacenko style, she turned the incident into a business opportunity.
“To this day, if people come up to her in the playground, she’s savvy enough to say, ‘If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything,’ and she walks away,” Jacenko beams proudly.
“And come February next year, we’ll be releasing an illustrated book about bullying based on the experiences Pixie had in the playground during Oli’s jail period. It has a really important message that we have to be kind to one another.
“My biggest wish for my children is that they stay happy and healthy. I don’t care if I don’t end up with lawyers and doctors, as long as they enjoy what they’re doing, that’s all I can wish for.”