After an unsuccessful operation
‘I’m sick of hiding’: Linda Evangelista back on cover for first time
Linda Evangelista 2015 in New York City
© Justin Lane / DPA
Supermodel Linda Evangelista has been out of the public eye for five years. The reason: A failed cosmetic procedure had “brutally disfigured”. She now tells her story to “People” magazine and shows her body.
Last September, former supermodel Linda Evangelista made it public that she was “permanently deformed” due to a rare side effect of a cosmetic procedure. Even more: the “disfigurement” made her “depressed” and finally a “hermit”, Evangelista wrote on Instagram at the time.
The 56-year-old now describes her ordeal in detail as the cover star of “People” magazine and wants to fight her way back to life: “I can no longer live like this, in secret and in shame. I can no longer live with this pain. I I’m ready to finally talk about it.”
Failed cosmetic surgery
In the ’90s she walked the runways with Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. She was one of the most successful models in the world and the brand face of L’Oréal and Prada. Then Evangelista underwent the so-called CoolSculpting. The accumulation of fat is actually removed with the help of cold. Three months after her treatment, she noticed swelling on her chin, hips and chest. So the very areas that she “wanted to shrink suddenly grew and hardened. Then they went numb.” The consequences of the treatment not only destroyed her existence, but also plunged her into “deep depression, deep sadness and deep self-loathing”. For the first time she shows the extent of her unsuccessful cosmetic surgery in pictures.
She tried to do something about swelling herself. To get rid of the fat, she started excessive dieting. In June 2016, she went to see a doctor who diagnosed her with what is known as paradoxical adipose hyperplasia. This is an extremely rare complication of cosmetic cold applications.
To this day she cannot walk without compression clothing because otherwise she would chafe sorely, she reveals to “People”. “I loved being on the catwalk. Now I dread meeting people who know me.” She herself no longer looks in the mirror – “it doesn’t look like me anymore.”
Top model demands millions of dollars in damages
Evangelista is in a legal dispute with the parent company of the company Zeltiq Aesthetics, where she had the procedure carried out. She is demanding $50 million in damages. That’s about 42.6 million euros. She accuses the company of not being sufficiently informed about potential side effects. In addition, they have not been able to pursue their modeling job since then. According to “People”, Zeltiq Aesthetics did not comment on the allegations and referred to the ongoing lawsuit.
Source: “people”