Celebrity
Bella Hadid Got Real About Regretting Her Nose Job & Hurtful Comparisons To Gigi
“I was the uglier sister. I was the brunette. I wasn’t as cool as Gigi, not as outgoing.”
After previously implying she hasn’t had plastic surgery, such as a nose job, Bella Hadid confirmed she did, indeed, get the procedure done at 14 in a new Vogue cover story. “I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors,” she said in the interview, out March 15. “I think I would have grown into it.” But the model shut down rumors about other adjustments to her eyes or lips. (As plastic surgeon Dr. Kay Durairaj told Bustle last year, Hadid is one of her clients’ most popular reference photos for lip fillers.)
“People think I fully f*cked with my face because of one picture of me as a teenager looking puffy,” Hadid said. “I’m pretty sure you don’t look the same now as you did at 13, right? I have never used filler. Let’s just put an end to that. I have no issue with it, but it’s not for me. Whoever thinks I’ve gotten my eyes lifted or whatever it’s called — it’s face tape! The oldest trick in the book.”
Hadid also revealed that she struggles with imposter syndrome, “where people made me feel like I didn’t deserve any of this,” and acknowledged the impact of being compared to her older sister, Gigi Hadid. “I was the uglier sister. I was the brunette. I wasn’t as cool as Gigi, not as outgoing,” she told the magazine. “That’s really what people said about me. 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?”
Though Hadid said she overcame that self-doubt by “[putting] on a very smiley face, or a very strong face” and never missing a job, she revealed that she experienced burnout last year as a result. “It literally makes me sick to my stomach if I leave somewhere and someone is unhappy with me, so I always go above and beyond, but the issue with that is that I get home and I don’t have enough for myself,” she said.
Therapy and medication helped, though — as has journaling, Hadid told Bustle earlier this year. “For me, journaling for 30 minutes in the morning before I get on my phone helps with my anxiety. And then I do a gratitude meditation. Just to start my day and say, ‘I’m grateful that I’m alive, I’m grateful for all that I have.’”
