One of the most in-demand models of the moment, 25-year-old Bella Hadid has graced campaigns for the most celebrated designers and walked every major high-fashion runway. Now, the model is getting candid in Vogue’s April issue, opening up about her long struggle with Lyme disease, her mental health, her bout with anorexia nervosa, and the rhinoplasty she now regrets getting at age 14.
Delving deep, Hadid chronicled what it was like growing up with another soon-to-be top model as a sister. Having been told she was the ugly duckling in comparison to her older sibling, Gigi Hadid, the brunette beauty told the publication, “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.”
Hadid admitted to getting a nose job at the age of 14 but now wishes she “had kept the nose of my ancestors,” she said. “I think I would have grown into it.”
Hadid is also well-aware that people have speculated whether she’s gotten any additional work done. To set the record straight — no she has not.
“People think I fully f—d with my face because of one picture of me as a teenager looking puffy,” she said. “I’m pretty sure you don’t look the same now as you did at 13, right? I have never used filler. Let’s just put an end to that. I have no issue with it, but it’s not for me. Whoever thinks I’ve gotten my eyes lifted or whatever it’s called—it’s face tape! The oldest trick in the book. I’ve had this impostor syndrome where people made me feel like I didn’t deserve any of this. People always have something to say, but what I have to say is, I’ve always been misunderstood in my industry and by the people around me.”
In addition to opening up about pressures she’s faced regarding her looks, she also detailed her experience with anorexia, explaining that it all started in the early days of her struggle with Lyme disease.
Before getting her Lyme disease diagnosis, in high school a psychiatrist prescribed Hadid Adderall for brain-fog symptoms, attributing the inattention to what could have been ADHD. Her new stimulant medication’s appetite-suppressant side effects quickly lead Hadid to start counting calories, eventually leading to anorexia. While the supermodel now has a healthy relationship with food, she links her past eating disorder with the need for control. “I can barely look in the mirror to this day because of that period in my life,” she said.
Hadid admitted her body struggles lingered as she got into modeling, recalling a time when a stylist pointed out the fact that she couldn’t fit into a Saint Laurent sample size, and reflected on how far she’s come in the industry.
“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. I put on a very smiley face, or a very strong face. I always felt like I had something to prove. People can say anything about how I look, about how I talk, about how I act. But in seven years I never missed a job, canceled a job, was late to a job. No one can ever say that I don’t work my ass off.”
Recently, Hadid has placed a much-needed spotlight on mental health, often touting the benefits of therapy and the comfort she finds in her spirituality in candid Instagram posts. She told the outlet that during a very busy fashion month, she keeps balanced by placing a newfound emphasis on her precious time off, which she spends focused on herself, her family, and her boyfriend of almost two years, art director Marc Kalman.
While it can’t be easy to open up to the world, we applaud Hadid for sharing her story. On her Instagram Story, she summed up the experience by sharing the cover and writing, “grateful.”
