Model Linda Evangelista Shares First Photos of Her Body Since Cosmetic Procedure Left Her 'Deformed'

By Anna Rumer

Supermodel Linda Evangelista is sharing her story after she claims CoolSculpting left her "permanently deformed" and "brutally disfigured." Having lived in seclusion for almost five years, the 56-year-old fashion icon opened up to PEOPLE in an interview published Wednesday, sharing photos of her body for the first time publicly. See the photos here.

Evangelista previously filed a lawsuit in September against CoolSculpting's parent company, Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc., for $50 million in damages, alleging damages that occurred after undergoing seven sessions of the "fat-freezing" procedure in a dermatologist's office from August 2015 to February 2016. Within three months after Evangelista's treatments, she began noticing hardening and numbing bulges on her chin, thighs and back.

"I tried to fix it myself, thinking I was doing something wrong," said Evangelista, who began dieting and exercising more. "I got to where I wasn't eating at all. I thought I was losing my mind." In June 2016, she went to her doctor, who diagnosed her with Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia (PAH), a rare side effect that affects less than 1% of CoolSculpting patients and causes fatty tissue to thicken and expand.

"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," Evangelista said, adding that her posture has even been affected because she can no longer rest her arm alongside her body. "I don't look in the mirror," she added. "It doesn't look like me."

Having decided to come forward with her truth after what happened, Evangelista said she's lost her identity throughout. "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 told the magazine. "I don't recognize myself physically, but I don't recognize me as a person any longer either. [Linda Evangelista the supermodel] is sort of gone."

CoolSculting told PEOPLE that the procedure "has been well studied with more than 100 scientific publications and more than 11 million treatments performed worldwide" and that rare side effects like PAH "continue to be well-documented in the CoolSculpting information for patients and health care providers." 

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