I Can’t Stop Thinking About Linda Evangelista’s CoolSculpting Lawsuit

How are we supposed to age, anyway?

I told a friend that I wanted to write about Linda Evangelista and her lawsuit against Zeltiq, the parent company of CoolSculpting, and she promptly shut me down. “Isn’t that a tired subject? Beautiful models with body dysmorphia?” But that’s not why I’m ruminating over this story. My friend is right that the subject of women hating their bodies is a tired, boring story. That’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is the Greek tragedy of it all.

A recap: Linda Evangelista is a person of otherworldly strange beauty. In the 80s and 90s she looked like a cross between a gazelle and a hammerhead shark, made of alabaster — but in the best way. You could tell she knew a secret the rest of us didn’t: what it felt like to look so rarefied, so beautiful and bizarre and extra-terrestrial.

Apparently somewhere along the way, like many of us, she gained weight. She decided to “fix” this by undergoing CoolSculpting treatment. She now alleges that this treatment made her permanently disfigured. Enter lawsuit.

Without googling, here’s what I understand about CoolSculpting after years of reading glossy mag articles, Instagram ads, and brochures from med spas: It’s a non-invasive treatment to “melt” “stubborn” body fat using some sort of freezing mechanism. (Therefore it’s “cool”). “Stubborn” fat refers to subcutaneous fat, as opposed to the fat that’s more likely to make you unhealthy — the fat that you can’t see but surrounds your internal organs. The subcutaneous fat is called “stubborn” because the CoolSculpting folks are pushing this idea that even with good diet and exercise, this type of fat is hard to make disappear. Therefore, all the brochures say that you should only get CoolSculpting if you are otherwise at your goal weight, but still can’t get rid of these excess pockets of fat.

I’m not sure that people follow this last rule. I’ve seen plastic surgeons on Instagram promoting before and after CoolSculpting photos of people who are clearly “overweight” (whatever that means these days). I commented once on a before-and-after photo of a woman who was clearly, very clearly, in the very high BMI range, and asked the doctor why she was getting CoolSculpting it was only for people who were at their goal weight? The doctor replied that I was correct, and that this person had indeed reached that goal. But the photos showed a completely different reality. The mind boggles.

So, it’s all deeply confusing. Is it true that subcutaneous fat is harder to lose than the other kind of fat? No idea, because I can’t seem to lose any fat, at all, no matter what, ever. Is it bad for you to remove fat cells in general? I’ve seen women who have undergone liposuction on one part of their body, only to disproportionately gain weight later in other parts of their bodies with remaining fat cells. Lately I’ve been intrigued by what Dr. Ben Bikman writes in Why We Get Sick, about how obesity and disease has everything to do with our insulin responses, and less to do with caloric intake. He discusses the the two ways to gain weight — one is an increase in the number of fat cells, and the other is an increased size of existing fat cells. The first way is apparently healthier, so does that mean that liposuction and other fat “melting” methods are not just misused, but actually unhealthy? Doesn’t it seem weird to remove cells from your body?

Which brings me back to Linda. Presumably, she had tried to lose weight through diet and exercise. Presumably, she had the resources to do that — personal trainers, access to nutritious food, time on her hands. Presumably these efforts, while they likely made her healthier, didn’t create the aesthetic appearance she wanted. So she flew too close to the sun.

It’s this moment of decision that intrigues me. Here, Linda made a choice based purely on vanity — and no judgment there, at all — and not only did it not work, she became “permanently disfigured,” due to a condition called paradoxical adipose hyperplasia, which left firm tissue masses in the treated areas. In other words, she went into the procedure trying to look less fat, and now she is permanently fat. (She even underwent two subsequent liposuction procedures, including “full body liposuction” — yikes — to remove the masses, but they failed).

Like many things, Greek mythology has something to say about this type of decision. The concept of “hubris” describes the dire consequences that befall heroes when they decide to give the finger to nature and divine order. In a way, Linda seems to be a modern-day Icarus, who was given wax wings and feathers so that he could fly. But he ignored warning about the heat of the sun, flew too close, and predictably his wings melted and he drowned in the ocean.

Or Frankenstein. How can we not think about Dr. Victor Frankenstein when we think about these clearly unnatural procedures? Dr. Frankenstein defied the natural order by creating a living, sentient being — but he later abandons his creation because he is disgusted by its monstrous shape. Frankenstein is deeply lonely due to this abandonment, and in retaliation sets out to murder Dr. Victor’s loved ones, to ensure his life is just as lonely. (My heart hurts to type this). Dr. Victor’s hubris — the desire to create life when he was not a natural creator — results in the most unimaginable consequences, reminding us to not fuck with the natural order, at all, ever.

In case I haven’t bashed you over the head enough with the comparison yet, here’s what I can’t stop thinking about: Linda possessed superhuman, otherworldly beauty. So much beauty that she made millions of dollars for simply existing in her beauty. Once she started aging, and her beauty started to wane, she felt that she had to interfere with the divine order of things, resulting in dire, permanent consequences. The desire for perfection, to overcome the natural order of the passage of time, was so strong that she was willing to remove cells from her body — cells that presumably were put there for a reason. Linda wanted to maintain perfection by any means necessary, and the universe, or Mother Nature, or the natural order, or whoever, decided to bop her on the nose. Again, as Dr. Victor learned: do not screw with the natural order.

But I so understand why she did it. I too have yearned for many cosmetic procedures: a boob job, traditional lipo, and yes, CoolSculpting. The other day I saw a video of myself swimming, and the level of self-hatred I felt when I saw my body move through the water — which basically looked like a manatee moving real slow — was so angry and visceral, I spent the next day with an internal monologue so mean and nasty about my slovenliness and laziness that I’m too embarrassed to be more specific.

But every time I’m about to pull the trigger on one of those procedures, I hesitate. There seems to be something wrong and unnatural about sucking fat cells out of your body, or removing breast tissue. I’ve always had a fear of “taunting the universe” by doing something “unnatural.” (Although to be fair, how do we even know what is unnatural these days, with science doing the unthinkable now?) I, like lots of women, try to be eat healthfully(ish) and stay active (ish) so if my body continues to add layer upon layer of fat as the years go by, maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be?

But that doesn’t feel right either. That feels lazy, a celebration of inertia. But then how are we supposed to age? Are we supposed to “fight” it? Why do all the skin-care commercials use terms like — “battle” and “fight” — as if we are going to war with ourselves?

I don’t know the answer. I do know that I cried to my personal trainer today, explaining how much I hated myself when I saw my swimming video. “Pull it together” she snapped, “do you know how many people would love to be able to swim?”

She’s right, of course. I’m dangerously close to suffering from hubris myself — my fatal flaw being that I can’t recognize how grateful I should be to have a working, moving body. Let’s hope I can keep it in check, and not fly too close to the sun.

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