Bella Hadid has been very honest with her fans about struggling with anxiety and depression since she was a teenager. And now she has opened up about her mental health struggles once again, telling Vogue in her most candid and heartbreaking interview ever that she never felt beautiful when she was younger, and had insecurities about her appearance from a very early age – especially when compared to her 26-year-old older sister, Gigi Hadid.
For Vogue‘s April issue, the 25-year-old model told the magazine that she felt like she was living in Gigi’s shadow and always made to feel like the “uglier sister,” which she said understandably led to a number of different mental health issues. “I was the uglier sister. I was the brunette. I wasn’t as cool as Gigi, not as outgoing. That’s really what people said about me,” Bella told the mag for its bombshell cover interview. “And unfortunately when you get told things so many times, you do just believe it.”
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Bella then went on to talk about the irony of her ending up in the modeling industry, adding: “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?”
Although Bella is now one of the most in-demand supermodels in the world, walking the runway and posing in ad campaigns for the biggest brands in existence, she has regularly told fans that she still struggles with her mental health. But she told Vogue that even on a bad day, she would never cancel a modeling job, because she said that she has become such a “good actress” who can “put on a very smiley face or a very strong face,” even during the darkest times.
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Bella told the fashion bible that she always maintained professionalism ever since she signed to IMG Models back in 2014, saying: “I always felt like I had something to prove. People can say anything about how I look, about how I talk, about how I act. But in seven years I never missed a job, canceled a job, was late to a job. No one can ever say that I don’t work my [expletive] off.”
She also briefly touched on suffering from anorexia, which she developed in high school after being prescribed extended-release Adderall for ADHD, which Bella said had an appetite-suppressant effect that then led to her eating disorder. “I was on this calorie-counting app, which was like the devil to me,” Bella recalled. “I’d pack my little lunch with my three raspberries, my celery stick. I was just trying, I realize now, to feel in control of myself when I felt so out of control of everything else.”
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Although Bella confirmed that those days are now behind her and she now has a healthy relationship with food, she admitted that she still struggles with accepting her appearance, adding, “I can barely look in the mirror to this day because of that period in my life.”
The candid confessions didn’t end there, as the half-Dutch, half-Palestinian model confirmed that she did indeed have a nose job when she was just 14 years old, but now regrets the decision, saying: “I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors. I think I would have grown into it.”
