Beauty
Linda Evangelista Said She’s ‘Done With Hiding’ And Opened Up On What Happened
Modeling was her whole life and suddenly, she hated herself again.
A supermodel from the ’80s and ’90s who continued to walk the runways and make it to magazine covers went into hiding for years. Concerned friends to curious fans had wondered for the longest time what happened to Linda Evangelista.
One look at her and you know she loves her modeling career and would go through hoops to maintain her figure. But she’s been “brutally disfigured.”
She’s opened up in an interview with People and revealed what happened and how she’d been living her life since the shocking change. The 56-year-old shared that after going through seven sessions of CoolSculpting procedure which was promoted as a “non-invasive alternative to liposuction,” she was left “permanently deformed.”
“I loved being up on the catwalk. Now I dread running into someone I know,” said the model.
But she’s had enough and added, “I can’t live like this anymore, in hiding and shame. I just couldn’t live in this pain any longer. I’m willing to finally speak.”
She filed a lawsuit against Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc. for $50 million in damages, the parent company of CoolSculpting after alleging that she lost her job after the sessions that took place between August 2015 to February 2016.
She began her successful career at the age of 19 and has appeared on more than 700 covers worldwide including Rolling Stone, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and more.
She’s also the muse to Chanel’s head designer, Karl Lagerfeld, and Gianni Versace. Her iconic short haircut became a worldwide trend and gave her the nick “The Linda.”
She was an icon and one of her famous quotes was to work no less than $10,000 a day.
But three months after getting the procedure, she saw bulges appearing on various areas of her body, the parts where she’d thought would shrink. And they hardened.
She said, “I tried to fix it myself, thinking I was doing something wrong. I got to where I wasn’t eating at all. I thought I was losing my mind.”
Then in June, four months after the procedure, she went to the doctor, dropped her robe while sobbing, and asked what she did wrong. The doctor diagnosed her with Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia (PAH). It is a rare side effect that affects less than 1% of CoolSculpting patients.
Unfortunately, no amount of dieting or exercise will fix it as the freezing process causes the opposite effect.
“In many circumstances the affected areas are no longer amenable to liposuction like they would’ve been in the first place,” explained plastic surgeon from Northwell School of Medicine, Dr. Alan Matarasso.
The procedure is supposed to help reduce fat deposits by up to 20% and doesn’t take as long to recover from as liposuction.
But she’s back now. In a world where body positivity is the message, she’s back to the modeling world and has recently made appearances with her fellow model friends, like Kate Moss.
