The supermodel says she has developed hard, protruding lumps on her body due to a rare side effect from the popular, fat-freezing CoolSculpting procedure.
Celebrity supermodel Linda Evangelista spent nearly five years in solitude after she said she was disfigured by a popular cosmetic treatment, but now she's coming forward to share the condition that left her body "unrecognizable." Have given.
Evangelista, 56, spoke with People for the cover story of her upcoming issue of "hiding and shame" when she developed discolored lumps on her body that she says were caused by CoolSculpting, a popular fat. -Freezing treatment that is seen as a non-invasive alternative to liposuction.
"I loved being on the catwalk. Now I'm intimidated by someone I know," she told People. "I can no longer live in such hide and shame. I can no longer live in this pain. I am finally ready to speak."
"In her own words, she's become a recluse," People's deputy West Coast editor Jason Sheeler told Emily Ikeda on Wednesday. "She says she's agoraphobic.
"She says she still doesn't look in the mirror. She still doesn't want to leave her house."
Evangelista first shared in an Instagram post in September that she became depressed and rarely went out in public because of what she said were due to the CoolSculpting procedures. The supermodel who has garnered more than 700 magazine covers in her career and famously starred in George Michael's "Freedom" music video in 1990, now fears her modeling career is over.
She worked with Cool Sculpting's parent company, Zeltic Aesthetics Inc. in September for $50 million, stating that she was unable to work for seven seasons in 2015–16 due to complications.
"I had stubborn fat. CoolSculpting appealed to me because it wasn't radical. It was like a spot treatment," he said on the People Every Day podcast.
Evangelista alleged in her lawsuit that she "developed a hard, bulging, painful mass under her skin" following treatments to break down fat cells in her abdomen, abdomen, back and bra area, inner thighs and chin. He gave a glimpse of the regions in the People cover story.
According to her lawsuit, she had two liposuction surgeries that weren't able to correct the deformities.
Zeltic Aesthetics declined to comment about Evangelista's lawsuit for today, citing the ongoing lawsuit, but said in a statement that CoolSculpting has "more than 100 scientific publications and more than 11 million entries made worldwide." The treatments have been well studied."
Treatment uses very low temperatures or cryotherapy to destroy fat cells. TODAY's Savannah Guthrie and Jenna Bush Hager tried it out in 2018, with Savannah saying, "It's really just a spot treatment."
The procedure is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and side effects experienced by Evangelista are rare and have been reported to patients. Evangelista said she was never made aware of the risks.
She told People she had been diagnosed with paradoxical adipose hyperplasia (PAH), a rare side effect where the freezing process in CoolSculpting causes fatty tissue to thicken and expand.
"Bulges are bulges," he told People. "And they're tough. If I walk in a dress without a waistband, I'll be chafing almost to the point of bleeding. Because it's not like rubbing soft fat, it's like rubbing hard fat."
"Bulges and bulges are permanent, she says, and so they may not go away," Schiller said. "And so right now, all she knows is that she doesn't want to hide anymore, and she wants to start talking about it."
Evangelista says that the transformation is beyond her appearance.
"I don't recognize myself physically, but I don't even recognize me as a person anymore," she told People.