Linda Evangelista Speaks Out About Her Plastic Surgery Nightmare: 'I'm Done Hiding'

Linda Evangelista is sharing her story.

Late last year, the 56-year-old model revealed she had been “permanently deformed” after undergoing the fat-reduction procedure CoolSculpting.

In a new interview with People, Linda opened up about the emotional and physical pain the aftermath of the procedure has caused.

Click inside to read more…

“I loved being up on the catwalk. Now I dread running into someone I know,” she told the outlet. “I can’t live like this anymore, in hiding and shame. I just couldn’t live in this pain any longer. I’m willing to finally speak.”

Three months after receiving CoolSculpting procedure, Linda began to notice bulges at her chin, thighs and bra area. The areas she had been looking to treat were growing larger and hardening, until suddenly they went numb.

“I tried to fix it myself, thinking I was doing something wrong,” she said. “I got to where I wasn’t eating at all. I thought I was losing my mind.”

She consulted a doctor about the issue in June 2016. “I dropped my robe for him,” she recalled. “I was bawling, and I said, ‘I haven’t eaten, I’m starving. What am I doing wrong?’ ” When he diagnosed her with Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia (PAH), she says, “I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ And he told me no amount of dieting, and no amount of exercise was ever going to fix it.”

PAH is a side effect that affects less than 1 percent of CoolSculpting patients, where the freezing process causes fatty tissue to thicken and expand.

Linda claims that when her doctor contacted CoolSculpting about her PAH, the company offered to pay for liposuction in order to “make it right.” In her suit, the model says that the night before her liposuction procedure, she was told that Coolsculpting’s parent company, Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc., would only cover the procedure if she signed a confidentiality agreement.

She refused and underwent the first of two full-body liposuction surgeries, which she says she paid for, in 2016. After the surgery, she wore compression garments, girdles and a chin strap for eight weeks in order to prevent the PAH from coming back. Linda says eventually it came back anyway, even after she had a second liposuction in July 2017.

“It wasn’t even a little bit better,” she said. “The bulges are protrusions. And they’re hard. If I walk without a girdle in a dress, I will have chafing to the point of almost bleeding. Because it’s not like soft fat rubbing, it’s like hard fat rubbing.” She added that her her posture has also been impacted because she can no longer “put my arms flat along my side.”

“I don’t think designers are going to want to dress me with that sticking out of my body,” she said, gesturing to the rectangular shaped PAH under her arm.

“I don’t look in the mirror,” Linda said. “It doesn’t look like me.”

She went on to say that she’s decided to share her story and make her lawsuit public in order to recover her sense of self.

“Why do we feel the need to do these things [to our bodies]? I always knew I would age. And I know that there are things a body goes through. But I just didn’t think I would look like this,” she said, explaining that she feels Linda Evangelista, the supermodel, is gone. “I don’t recognize myself physically, but I don’t recognize me as a person any longer either.”

“I hope I can shed myself of some of the shame and help other people who are in the same situation as me,” she concluded. “That’s my goal. I’m not going to hide anymore.”

Find out which other stars have been open about their cosmetic surgeries in the past.