Many people believe 25-year-old Bella Hadid to be this generation’s answer to the supermodels of the 1990s. During that era, the women who dominated fashion could balance haute fashion catwalks with commercial campaigns, becoming household names in the process. Hadid is no different; since launching her career in 2014, she’s become one of the world’s highest paid models and currently has 50.2 million followers on Instagram.
And as is the case with all talented and beautiful women who live life in the spotlight, Hadid’s appearance over the years has been a topic of plastic surgery speculation. Her strong features are often attributed to the rise in requests for fashionable cosmetic procedures, like the canthoplasty and the noninvasive fox-eye thread lift, but the model has always denied getting any work done (in 2018, Hadid told InStyle that she was “scared” of plastic surgery and fillers changing her face)—until now.
In the cover story for the April issue of Vogue, Hadid opened up about her lifelong struggles with mental health, body image, and the regret she’s felt after undergoing a rhinoplasty when she was just 14 years old.
In the interview, Hadid spoke candidly about her battle with depression and detailed her struggles with Lyme disease. She recognizes the irony of success in her chosen career, telling the publication, “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?”
Hadid reveals that she always felt like the “uglier sister” when she compared herself to her older sister, supermodel Gigi Hadid, who was blonde and popular in school. As a teenager, she felt intense scrutiny regarding her appearance, which led to her decision to get a nose job. She now acknowledges that she wishes she hadn’t gone through with the procedure. “I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors,” Hadid, who is half-Palestinian, says. “I think I would have grown into it.”
Rhinoplasty is a surgery that can change the nose’s size, structure, and shape. The procedure has a 91% Worth It Rating and costs $7,725 on average, and it’s consistently ranked in the top five cosmetic surgeries. Nose reshaping is also one of the most popular surgeries among 13- to 19-year-olds, though Hadid’s experience may serve as a cautionary tale to wait until you’re older to go under the knife.
However, she’s quick to point out that while she has no issue with cosmetic surgery, it’s simply not for her. The model denies ever having used fillers or having any other cosmetic surgeries. “Whoever thinks I’ve gotten my eyes lifted or whatever—it’s face tape! The oldest trick in the book.” (Some doctors are skeptical of the transformative powers of face tape in the eye area, but many TikTok users swear by it, so do what you will with that info…)
Today, Hadid feels better about herself—thanks in part to a regimen that includes talk therapy, medications, holistic practices, and frequent trips to her family farm in Pennsylvania. She tells Vogue that she must put in the effort to remain feeling healthy and good about herself while working in an industry that is known for exacerbating feelings of low self-esteem and negative body image in young women. “Fashion can make you or break you. And if it makes you, you have to make a conscious effort for it not to break you,” she says.
