After over five years of hiding away, Linda Evangelista is “willing to finally speak” about the botched cosmetic procedure she first had in 2015 which left her “brutally deformed” and changed her life forever. Evangelista, who was once one of the most iconic and in-demand supermodels of the 90s thanks to her stunning face and a body to die for, made the heartbreaking confession in the latest issue of People magazine, where she not only went into all the details about the devastating effects of the fat-freezing CoolSculpting procedure, but also shared multiple shocking pictures of what the procedure has done to her face and body.
The 56-year-old supermodel went into detail about the procedure she first had over six years ago, and said that she had a total of seven sessions in a dermatologist’s office from August 2015 to February 2016. The procedure is a popular FDA-approved treatment that is marketed as a non-invasive alternative to liposuction, but Evangelista claimed that it seemed to have the reverse effect on her. The Canadian fashion model told People that she started noticing bulges around her chin, thighs, and around the bra area after a few sessions, claiming that the areas she wanted to shrink were not only getting bigger, but were actually going numb too.
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Evangelista explained that the procedure left her “deformed” and she is now experiencing “emotional” and “physical” pain as a result of it. She told People that she filed a lawsuit against CoolSculpting’s parent company, Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc., back in September, and is suing them for $50 million in damages since she claims that she is now unable to work following the results of the procedure.
“I loved being up on the catwalk. Now I dread running into someone I know,” she candidly explained to People. “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.” The multiple-time-Vogue-cover star then explained that she tried to do everything she could to “fix” the problem on her own, even going as far as dieting and exercising to extreme levels. 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.”
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The supermodel finally went to the doctor in June back in 2016, who diagnosed her with Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia (PAH) which is a rare side effect that affects less than 1 percent of CoolSculpting patients, and causes the affected fatty tissue to thicken and expand rather than shrink. Evangelista told the mag: “I dropped my robe for him. I was bawling, and I said, ‘I haven’t eaten, I’m starving. What am I doing wrong?'” And when the doctor diagnosed her with PAH, Evangelista said: “I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ And he told me no amount of dieting, and no amount of exercise was ever going to fix it.”
Evangelista went on to say that the company offered to pay for liposuction to correct the PAH damage, but only if she signed an NDA. She claims that she refused to sign the confidentiality agreement and paid for the liposuction herself, which she had for the first time in June 2016, and then again in July 2017. However, the treatments didn’t work, and Evangelista confessed, “It wasn’t even a little bit better,” following the second surgery.
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“The bulges are protrusions. And they’re hard. If I walk without a girdle in a dress, I will have chafing to the point of almost bleeding. Because it’s not like soft fat rubbing, it’s like hard fat rubbing,” she added, before saying that even her posture has changed as a result of the PAH as she can no longer put her arms flat along her side.
Evangelista concluded by saying that she feels she has lost her identity, and even though she always knew she would age, she didn’t expect things to end up this way. “I don’t look in the mirror. It doesn’t look like me,” the model said. “Why do we feel the need to do these things to our bodies? I always knew I would age. And I know that there are things a body goes through. But I just didn’t think I would look like this. I don’t recognize myself physically, but I don’t recognize me as a person any longer either.”
