What must Linda think of the rest of us?

Linda Evangelista has been absent from the fashion world for the past few years.  At her peak, she was reckoned to be one of the most beautiful women in the world and famously once quipped that she would not get out of bed for less than $10,000. I don’t think that this endeared her to more ordinary folk who get out of bed for 100^th of that, and mostly to do something a lot less glamorous than prancing around as an over-paid clothes horse.

I had not noticed her absence because I would not have been able to pick her out in a line-up even at the height of her fame.  I might have got as far as “super model”, but would not have been able to put a name to the beautifully arrogant face. It seems that she has become a recluse following cosmetic titification that went wrong.  Instead of freezing fat, her dose of cryoliplysis triggered  a complication called  Paradoxical Adipose Hyperplasia which  makes fatty tissue grow faster.  She has now filed a $50 million lawsuit over the procedure, which she claims left her unable to earn her living as a model.

I have some sympathy for her, because losing your looks as you age is never welcome. If your income depends on your looks then that is very difficult, but at 56 years old I suspect the super model label would have naturally become “ex-super model” as younger women take over the catwalk.  I am sure there are roles for older women but perhaps no longer the starring ones.  No doubt this unfortunate occurrence has hit her hard and triggered a depression, but it is the comments she has made about her perception of her new body image that made me grimace.  She claims that she has been “permanently deformed” and “brutally disfigured”. The article I read in the paper was accompanied by a recent photo – admittedly she is no longer the most beautiful woman in the world, but still a very good looking 56 year old who actually looks like a 56 year  old – a bit jowly around the chin and she probably has flappy bingo wings like most of us. The idea that this represents “brutal disfigurement” seems hyperbolic.  “Disfigurement” is what happens when someone throws acid in your face and inflicts serious burns (perhaps because you have had the temerity to attempt to choose your own friends). “Deformity” occurs when your legs are blown off by a landmine or your arm is mangled in some piece of unguarded machinery. Sporting a stubborn double chin is not quite the same thing.

If Linda thinks that she is now loathsomely ugly, what on earth must she have thought about the rest of us repulsive specimens of womanhood for most of her gilded life?  If I looked anything like she does in the photo that I saw, I would be right chuffed, fatty inner thighs or no.