Linda Evangelista has returned to modelling after spending years away from the spotlight following a rare reaction to a procedure which left her ‘permanently disfigured’.
The 57-year-old supermodel went into hiding after she suffered a rare reaction to a fat freezing procedure six years ago, which she said left her “permanently deformed”.
Linda was diagnosed with paradoxical adipose hyperplasia posttreatment in 2016 — a condition that caused the targeted fat cells to protrude and harden instead of get smaller. She has since settled a lawsuit against Zeltiq Aesthetics for grievous injuries.
“If I had known side effects may include losing your livelihood and you’ll end up so depressed that you hate yourself,” she tearfully told British Vogue, “I wouldn’t have taken that risk.”
Linda said she first became aware of the procedure through seeing adverts “over and over” on television news. “They would ask, ‘Do you like what you see in the mirror?’ They were speaking to me. It was about stubborn fat in areas that wouldn’t budge. It said no downtime, no surgery, and…I drank the magic potion, and I would because I’m a little vain,” she continued.
“Am I cured mentally? Absolutely not,” she continued, noting her attempts to correct the side effects with liposuction, compression garments, and even stopping eating. Even now, Linda says, she cannot look at herself in the mirror or have anyone touch her.
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Indeed, Linda is pretty much entirely covered in the Vogue spread. “You’re not going to see me in a swimsuit, that’s for sure. It’s going to be difficult to find jobs with things protruding from me — without retouching, or squeezing into things, or taping things or compressing or tricking,” she explained. In the Vogue photos, her face, jaw, and neck are subsequently pulled back with tape and elastics. “I can’t walk around with tape and elastics everywhere [in real life],” she said.