Supermodel Bella Hadid regrets having cosmetic surgery

16 Mar 2022

CNN

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Supermodel Bella Hadid regrets having cosmetic surgery

In a wide-ranging Vogue interview about the pressures of modeling and beauty standards, Bella Hadid has confessed that she regrets having a nose job as a teenager.

Written by Lianne Kolirin, CNN

Supermodel Bella Hadid has confessed that she regrets having a nose job as a teenager.

Gracing the cover of American Vogue's April issue, the supermodel said she wishes she had not gone under the knife at 14.

"I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors," she said. "I think I would have grown into it."

Hadid has been accused of having had numerous other procedures, the magazine wrote, but the 25-year-old denies 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."

Hadid opened up about her mental health in an Instagram post in November last year. Alongside a series of tearful selfies, she wrote: "I've had enough breakdowns and burnouts to know this: if you work hard enough on yourself, spending time alone to understand your traumas, triggers, joys, and routine, you will always be able to understand or learn more about your own pain and how to handle it."

The new Vogue interview details the "burnout" Hadid says she experienced last year, which led her to a treatment program involving medication and talk therapy. "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."

While she alludes to "multiple childhood traumas," it is clear the pressures of working in the fashion industry have taken their toll.

Bella Hadid walks the runway during the Isabel Marant Fall-Winter 2022 show in Paris. Credit: Peter White/Getty Images

"I've had girls in my lap crying to me at four in the morning, still at fittings for a show when they have to be at another show at 7 a.m.," she said. "Completely destroyed, hair burned off, haven't eaten anything, exhausted to the point where they're shaking."

Hadid acknowledges progress has been made in recent years, but there remains much to be done as "fashion can make or break you."

She told Vogue: "Finally girls are standing up about sample sizes, but when I first started seven years ago, I couldn't fit into Saint Laurent. And I remember a stylist talking about my weight because I couldn't zip up.

"Looking back, I think, yeah, because a Saint Laurent sample size from the runway was just not a real size for anybody. But then you think there's something wrong with you, and no one around you is saying, no, no, you're fine, don't worry, it's a small size."

Hadid, daughter of real estate developer Mohamed Hadid and "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" alum Yolanda Hadid, also spoke of unfavorable comparisons with her sister, fellow model Gigi Hadid.

"I was the uglier sister. I was the brunette. I wasn't as cool as Gigi, not as outgoing," she said. "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."