Bella Hadid's recent Vogue interview is getting a lot of attention after its debut.
Bella graced the cover of the April 2022 edition of the fashion magazine. In the accompanying interview, she talks about her modeling career, her low-key life in New York City, and her famous family. Bella is the younger sister of fellow model Gigi Hadid. Both are daughters of former Dutch model Yolanda Hadid and real estate mogul Mohamed Hadid.
In the article, Bella admits to childhood trauma. She also opens up about regrets over having a nose job at just 14 years old. From the admissions she makes, many have come to question Yolanda's parenting, which has made headlines before, and how these dynamics played into the family's most recent drama around Gigi's 1-year-old daughter, Khai, shared with ex-boyfriend Zayn Malik.
Bella discusses her relationship with her mental health throughout the article. She admits to keeping anxiety and depression, as well as her 2012 Lyme disease diagnosis, compartmentalized from her modeling life.
"For three years while I was working, I would wake up every morning hysterical, in tears, alone," she told the magazine.
"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."
Bella admitted that while it's an industry she's blossomed in, it wasn't a likely one for her to pursue.
"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," she shared.
"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** off."
Bella struggled with constant comparisons to sister Gigi, who is just a year older than her.
"I was the uglier sister. I was the brunette. I wasn't as cool as Gigi, not as outgoing," she recalled.
"That's really what people said about me. And unfortunately when you get told things so many times, you do just believe it."
Bella also alludes to childhood trauma in the article, though she doesn't comment directly.
"Bella says that on account of multiple childhood traumas, about which she prefers to say no more, she does not remember broad swaths of her early years," the interviewers noted.
"She finds this somewhat embarrassing. But she remembers riding horses as soon as she could walk."
While she chose not to elaborate in this instance, she did have a little to say about this in a recent sit-down on the VS Voices podcast by Victoria's Secret.
"I always felt like my voice was never heard growing up, so that's why I have a lot of complications. Now I'm able to open up and speak my mind, especially within my relationships and within my family," she said.
"I grew up around men — whether that was in relationships or family or whatever that was — where I was constantly told that my voice was less important than their voice."
In the Vogue interview, Bella went on to discuss an upbringing where she was privileged but knew the value of hard work through the stories of both her immigrant parents. She recalled being uncomfortable in the grandeur of the homes her father built and brought her to.
"My dad didn't grow up with a lot at all, so to be very grand with everything he does — this was his way to make his father in heaven proud," she explains.
"At that age I didn't understand it. I just knew that being in his houses wasn't super comfortable for me."
Bella struggled with her body image while growing up. At 14, she had a nose job that she regrets, though she denies the other barrage of treatments and procedures people have accused her of having since.
"I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors," she said.
"I think I would have grown into it."
When Bella was prescribed extended-release Adderall for her inattention, which doctors believed to be ADHD but was later revealed to be a symptom of her auto-immune illnesses, she became anorexic.
"I was on this calorie-counting app, which was like the devil to me," she 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. I can barely look in the mirror to this day because of that period in my life."
Bella was 15 when her mother married David Foster. Though the marriage lasted only four years, it was an eventful patch of time during which some of their lives was documented on Bravo's The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. She remembers hiding with sister Gigi from the cameras, but audiences very clearly remember the glimpses at the two's lives that they caught during that time. It is from that place, combined with Bella's recent comments, that some strong criticism of Yolanda's parenting has come out.
Yolanda's time on RHOBH showed some peeks at Gigi's modeling career and the beginning of Bella's. During that time, Yolanda admitted on camera that she was worried Gigi was a lesbian because she played volleyball with teammates who were "big and bulky and they eat like men." She also gave Gigi grief over eating a bite of her own birthday cake, instructing her to stay "on the skinnier side."
In another scene, she told Gigi to eat a few almonds after she complained she was feeling unwell from only having eaten half an almond. "Have a couple of almonds and chew them really well," she told her daughter.
Of Bella's push into modeling, Yolanda noted the differences between her and Gigi.
"They are the black swan and the white swan, and obviously, as sisters that close in age there's always going to be competition, but Bella's going to do it her way," she said.
"When somebody's looking for a brunette with blue eyes, Gigi's not gonna get the job. If they are looking for an all-American girl, they're not going to hire Bella."
Possibly the most painful moment that aired regarding Bella was the discussion of the DUI she got at 17 years old. Following the incident, a "leak" of a letter Yolanda wrote to Bella was shared online, with many openly speculating Yolanda leaked the letter to embarrass her daughter and set her straight.
"You have literally turned into a spoiled, unthankful, unthoughtful careless human being that is lucky to be alive," Yolanda wrote, in part.
Of course, Yolanda isn't Bella's (or Gigi's or Anwar's) sole parent. Many have questioned why Mohamed Hadid would allow his daughter to live in an environment like this, or have a nose job at 14.
Yolanda hasn't commented on this, or anything else, publicly since news of the alleged altercation between herself and Gigi's ex-partner, Zayn Malik. The couple split after a situation when Zayn was said to have shoved Yolanda into a dresser during an argument regarding his and Gigi's daughter, Khai, while Gigi was away working.
"I adamantly deny striking Yolanda Hadid, and for the sake of my daughter I decline to give any further details, and I hope that Yolanda will reconsider her false allegations and move towards healing these family issues in private," Zayn told TMZ of the incident in a direct statement at the time.
In recent days, blind gossip items have indicated that Zayn may have never actually struck Yolanda, furthered by the fact she never filed a police report, and that she was hoping legal trouble would result in his deportation to the UK. No other parties involved have commented on the validity of these claims.
