In her cover story for Vogue, supermodel Bella Hadid opened up about her cosmetic surgery, and how she regretted it nearly a decade later. “I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors,” she admitted, after saying she got a nose job when she was 14. “I think I would have grown into it.”
The supermodel has been open about her body image struggles in the past, posting a lengthy Instagram caption about her “breakdowns” late last year. Hadid has since taken frequent social media breaks to help her handle it. “There were people online saying, ‘You live this amazing life,’” she said. “So then how can I complain? I always felt that I didn’t have the right to complain, which meant that I didn’t have the right to get help, which was my first problem.”
Hadid was famously featured on the Real Housewives franchise, where her mother Yolanda was a controversial parent to Gigi and Bella (Gigi’s boyfriend Zayn famously did not get along with her). Twitter users even pointed out how critical Yolanda is over her daughter’s bodies, and she was frequently telling them what they can and cannot eat on the show.
Bella has admitted to struggling with an eating disorder when she was a teen: “I can barely look in the mirror to this day because of that period in my life.” She was also often compared to her older sister, fellow model Gigi.
I was the uglier sister. I was the brunette. I wasn’t as cool as Gigi, not as outgoing. That’s really what people said about me. And unfortunately, when you get told things so many times, you do just believe it. I always ask myself, how did a girl with incredible insecurities, anxiety, depression, body-image issues, eating issues, who hates to be touched, who has intense social anxiety — what was I doing getting into this business? But over the years I became a good actress.
Now, Hadid says she is putting her mental health first. “Now everything that I do in my personal life is literally to make sure that my mental state stays above water. Fashion can make you or break you. And if it makes you, you have to make a conscious effort every day for it not to break you. There’s always a bit of grief in love.”