Linda Evangelista Opens Up About Her First Modeling Contract At 16: "They Wanted Me Naked"
Supermodel Linda Evangelista has been open about the botched CoolSculpting procedure that left her disfigured. In a recent interview with Vogue UK, she talked more about how the experience shaped her and also gave some insight into her early modeling days.
Linda sued Zeltiq, the parent company of CoolSculpting, and announced in July that she settled the case and is "happy to put this matter behind me." Prior to that, she shared photos of how the procedure left her "brutally disfigured" and "permanently deformed." She developed Paradoxical Adipose Hyperplasia (PAH), which caused bulges and protrusions that resulted in chafing and bleeding. She also spoke about the guilt and shame she faced when she realized that she was nearly unrecognizable.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, she opened up more about how the whole experience affected her. She also talked about her early years of modeling.
Linda Evangelista Opens Up about Her First Modeling Contract at 16: "They Wanted Me Naked"
Linda admitted that she's "a little vain," and that's what drove her to try out CoolSculpting for the first time. It sounded great at the time: no downtime and no surgery, and those areas of stubborn fat would go away. “So I went for it – and it backfired," she said.
Recovering from the whole process and coming to terms with how severely it affected her appearance left her in a state of desperation and despair. She even stopped eating at one point.
“I was so embarrassed, I’d just spent all this money and the only way I could think of to fix it was zero calories, and so I just drank water. Or sometimes I would have a stick of celery or one apple,” she said. “I was losing my mind.” She said her teenage son helped her maintain her sanity during the difficult process.
Linda was ushered into the modeling world from a young age. She was always tall, and people told her she would make a great model. When she was 16 years old, a Japanese agency offered her a summer contract. To her surprise, her strict parents allowed her to travel to Japan on her own. When she arrived at the agency, they asked her to take her clothes off because they needed measurements.
"But they already had my measurements," she said. "They wanted me naked, and it wasn’t a ‘Would you do nudes?’ conversation, it was a ‘You will do nudes.’ I left and called my mother and she said, ‘Get out now and get to the embassy.’ So that’s what I did, and they got me home.” She feels lucky she escaped unscathed and went on to have a successful modeling career.