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Last September, Linda Evangelista made a public statement about why she had been a recluse since 2016. Linda used to enjoy parties and fashion events, and then she just… went away. No one really understood why, and Linda finally decided to tell us: she had been “disfigured” by CoolSculpting, the cosmetic procedure where “fat” is “frozen” and then burned away by magic. It’s supposedly a non-invasive alternative to lipo. The problem is that Linda was part of the 1% to have a terrible reaction to CoolSculpting. She ended up filing a $50 million lawsuit against the company, and the suit is still pending. Now Linda covers the latest issue of People Mag, and she allowed People to take photos of her body (which you can see here).

Once one of the most photographed people in the world, supermodel Linda Evangelista has been living in seclusion for almost five years. Now she’s finally ready to share her story.

In this week’s issue of PEOPLE, Evangelista, 56, opens up about the emotional and physical pain that has cast a shadow on her life in recent years, after she claims CoolSculpting — a popular, FDA-cleared “fat-freezing” procedure that’s been promoted as a noninvasive alternative to liposuction — left her “permanently deformed” and “brutally disfigured.” Evangelista filed a lawsuit in September suing CoolSculpting’s parent company, Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc., for $50 million in damages, alleging that she’s been unable to work since undergoing seven sessions of CoolSculpting in a dermatologist’s office from August 2015 to February 2016.

“I loved being up on the catwalk. Now I dread running into someone I know,” she tells PEOPLE through tears in this week’s cover story. “I can’t live like this anymore, in hiding and shame. I just couldn’t live in this pain any longer. I’m willing to finally speak.”

Within three months after Evangelista’s treatments, she started noticing bulges at her chin, thighs and bra area. The same areas she’d wanted to shrink were suddenly growing. And hardening. Then they turned numb. “I tried to fix it myself, thinking I was doing something wrong,” says Evangelista, and she began dieting and exercising more. “I got to where I wasn’t eating at all. I thought I was losing my mind.”

Finally, in June 2016 she went to her doctor. “I dropped my robe for him,” she recalls. “I was bawling, and I said, ‘I haven’t eaten, I’m starving. What am I doing wrong?’” When he diagnosed her with Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia (PAH), she says, “I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ And he told me no amount of dieting, and no amount of exercise was ever going to fix it.”

PAH is a rare side effect that affects less than 1 percent of CoolSculpting patients, where the freezing process causes the affected fatty tissue to thicken and expand. “That’s the upsetting part,” says Dr. Alan Matarasso, a New York City plastic surgeon and professor at Northwell School of Medicine (he has never treated Evangelista). “Patients go in to have something reduced, and now it’s enlarged. And the problem with PAH is that, in some instances, it may not go away. In many circumstances the affected areas are no longer amenable to liposuction like they would’ve been in the first place.”

[From People]

People’s coverage included a statement from CoolSculpting, which you can read on the site. Linda’s lawsuit argues that no matter what CoolSculpting says now, back in 2016, they were not informing their clients/patients that PAH could happen to some people, or that a certain number of people would have a bad reaction to the procedure. As I said last year, I think Linda actually has a very good case. I feel really bad for her and those photos make her look spot heavy. Imagine starving yourself and still having all of these “bulging” areas on your body, and those areas are numb and hard. Ugh. This poor woman.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of People.

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