Bella Hadid admits she had a nose job at 14 and feels like Gigi’s ‘ugly’ sister in Vogue spread 

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Bella Hadid has spoken about her battles with mental health and her physical overhaul in an incredibly candid interview with Vogue magazine.

During the chat, the 25-year-old model, who previously claimed that she had not undergone any plastic surgery, revealed that she had a nose job at the age of just 14 – and now regrets it.   

Bella also detailed her struggles with body image and mental health, admitting she always felt ‘ugly’ and ‘uncool’ in comparison to elder sister Gigi, while reflecting on her battle with anorexia and seeking treatment for depression.  

Half Dutch-half Palestinian Bella said of her plastic surgery: ‘I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors. I think I would have grown into it.’ 

There aren’t specific laws surrounding cosmetic surgery in the States, but rhinoplasty can be performed when the nose has completed 90 percent of its growth, which can occur as early as age 13 in girls. 

Yet Bella insisted that rhinoplasty is the only procedure she’s had done, continuing: ‘People think I fully f***ed with my face because of one picture of me as a teenager looking puffy. 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.’ 

Bella went on to note that the criticism of her looks made her feel as though she wasn’t worthy of being deemed a supermodel. 

She explained: ‘I’ve had this impostor syndrome where people made me feel like I didn’t deserve any of this. People always have something to say, but what I have to say is, I’ve always been misunderstood in my industry and by the people around me.’ 

Growing up with a supermodel for an elder sister didn’t help matters either, with Bella noting she had spent her life comparing herself to Gigi, 26.    

She explained: ‘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. 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? But over the years I became a good actress. 

‘I put on a very smiley face, or a very strong face. 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 a*s off.’ 

While Bella spent her teens growing up in Gigi’s shadow she admitted that she struggled to remember her earlier years due to ‘childhood trauma’, that she did not touch on further. 

Bella is the daughter of Palestinian Jordanian real-estate developer Mohamed Hadid and Dutch former model Yolanda Hadid. 

As well as elder sister Gigi, Bella grew up alongside model brother Anwar, 22,on a ranch in Santa Barbara, California, before the family moved to Beverly Hills.

Bella suffered with mental health issues during her childhood, revealing she developed anorexia at high school. 

Bella had been prescribed extended-release Adderall for her inattention, as doctors believed she had suffered with ADHD, but Bella claimed the appetite-​suppressant effect of the medication kickstarted an eating disorder.

She recalled: ‘I was on this calorie-counting app, which was like the devil to me. 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.’

While Bella says she now has a healthy relationship with food, she still struggles with dysmorphic feelings, admitting: ‘I can barely look in the mirror to this day because of that period in my life.’  

The Hadid sisters have long had their diets scrutinised in public, with old episodes of The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills showing the pair willing to do what it takes to become models.   

Bravo previously shared a mashup of the sisters’ scenes on the series, including cringeworthy footage of their mother Yolanda, schilling out dieting advice and discouraging Gigi from playing volleyball because it will make her ‘bulky.’   

‘Volleyball is a very masculine sport. Modelling a very feminine thing,’ Yolanda tells the then-17-year-old while preparing dinner for her family in the season three episode that aired in 2012. 

Yolonda, who was a famous model before she became a mom, is brutally honest with her daughters about what it takes to succeed in the cutthroat industry.   

She also warns Gigi that she needs to stay thin in order to book work as a model, saying: ‘You can have one night of being bad, right. Then you gotta get back on your diet because, you know, in Paris and Milan they like the girls just a tad on the skinny side.’

Yolanda is still talking about Gigi’s diet in the next clip from season four, but this time she is praising her for her hard work. 

‘You are doing such a good job, Gigi,’ she tells her while on a shoot. ‘Aren’t you proud? It’s hard to exercise six days a week. It’s hard to not eat any sugar, and it’s hard to have to eat a salad every day, but now you see how it pays off.’ 

Bella’s work in the fashion industry hasn’t helped with her insecurities, with the Vogue cover girl discussing the toxic underside of the industry and the unrealistic expectations of models. 

She recalled: ‘I’ve had girls in my lap crying to me at four in the morning, still at fittings for a show when they have to be at another show at 7 a.m. completely destroyed, hair burned off, haven’t eaten anything, exhausted to the point where they’re shaking. 

‘Finally girls are standing up about sample sizes, but when I first started seven years ago, I couldn’t fit into Saint Laurent. And I remember a stylist talking about my weight because I couldn’t zip up. Looking back, I think, yeah, because a Saint Laurent sample size from the runway was just not a real size for anybody. 

‘But then you think there’s something wrong with you, and no one around you is saying, no, no, you’re fine, don’t worry, it’s a small size. They’re kind of just looking at you like I guess we’re going to have to put something else on. And you’re thinking, I guess it’s me then.’ 

She went on to state that the fashion industry can ‘make or break you’ and she has to work hard to ensure she’s not neglecting her mental health.  

Bella explained: ‘To have to wake up every morning with this brain—it’s not cute. So now everything that I do in my personal life is literally to make sure that my mental state stays above water. 

Fashion can make you or break you. And if it makes you, you have to make a conscious effort every day for it not to break you. There’s always a bit of grief in love.’  

Bella had attempted to deal with her demons in private and admitted she would start her days in hysterical tears before pushing aside her feelings to head to work. 

She said: ‘For three years while I was working, I would wake up every morning hysterical, in tears, alone. I wouldn’t show anybody that. I would go to work, cry at lunch in my little greenroom, finish my day, go to whatever random little hotel I was in for the night, cry again, wake up in the morning, and do the same thing.’ 

The problem eventually became so bad that she needed to book herself into a treatment facility for two weeks in order to unwind and take time out of work. 

She explained: ‘For so long, I didn’t know what I was crying about. I always felt so lucky, and that would get me even more down on myself. There were people online saying, “You live this amazing life”. So then how can I complain? 

‘I always felt that I didn’t have the right to complain, which meant that I didn’t have the right to get help, which was my first problem.’ 

Vogue’s April 2022 issue is available on newsstands nationwide on March 29