Model Linda Evangelista, 56, hid for five years and lived a completely reclusive life. You feel disfigured. She is shy. Now she is talking for the first time about her nightmare after several plastic surgeries.
“I loved being on the podium. Now I’m afraid of bumping into someone I know,” she tearfully told People magazine.
Linda Evangelista was the ultimate supermodel in the ’90s along with Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell, who earned millions and is one of the most photographed women in the world.
The former model told People magazine about her ordeal after the surgeriesPhoto: people
After her remarkable career, from August 2015 to February 2016, she underwent seven so-called wonderful sculpting treatments with her dermatologist, an FDA-approved procedure for freezing fat that has been heralded as a non-surgical alternative to liposuction.
July 2005: Linda presents the John Galliano collection for French fashion house Dior on the catwalkPhoto: Emmanuel Fradin/Reuters
Then the drama began: Within three months of Linda’s treatment, she noticed “bulges on her chin, thighs, and bra area.” The same areas that she wanted to shrink suddenly grew larger. and hardened. Then they became deaf.
She feels “permanently disfigured” and “brutally disfigured”. Evangelista filed a lawsuit in September, suing CoolSculpting’s parent company, Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc. for $50 million in damages. She says she can no longer work.
After her life in seclusion, she now consciously appears in public. “I can’t live like this anymore, in secret and in disgrace. I couldn’t live with this pain any more. I am ready to finally speak.”
Photo from 1991: Linda Evangelista, 26, at the height of her careerPhoto: WireImage
“I tried to fix it myself because I thought I was doing something wrong,” Evangelista says. I went on a diet and exercised more. “Once upon a time I didn’t eat anything at all. I thought I had lost my mind.”
Finally, in June 2016, she went to see her doctor. “I left my robe for him,” she remembers. “I cried and said, I didn’t eat, I’m starving. What am I doing wrong?” However, sports and diet will not help.
PAHs are a rare side effect, affecting less than 1 percent of CoolSculpting patients, according to People magazine, as freezing causes the affected fatty tissue to thicken and expand. The magazine quoted Dr. Alan Mataraso, a plastic surgeon in New York and a professor at Northwell College of Medicine.
He didn’t treat Evangelista but describes the problem: “Patients come in to have something smaller and now it’s getting bigger. The problem with PAHs is that in some cases it doesn’t go away. In many cases, the affected areas aren’t as good for liposuction as they were originally.”
In a statement to People, a CoolSculpting representative said the procedure is “well-studied with over 100 scientific publications and over 11 million treatments performed worldwide.” However, known rare side effects such as PAH were included in CoolSculpting information for patients and healthcare providers are still “well documented”.
