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One of the top supermodels of the 1990s, Canadian Linda Evangelista, has announced that she will be suing a cosmetic altering company for deforming her face.

Linda, who is now 56 years old, has always been a strikingly beautiful woman, remaining so for successive decades. What is befuddling is how she didn’t know this and felt the need to be constantly validated by others.

She is a mother, does good philanthropic work, is intelligent with a good sense of humour; in short she comes across as a good person with endearing traits.

Linda has transcended to iconic status and though she can still do modelling work – if she so chooses- she doesn’t have to be pitted against this generation of catwalk stars. She has been there, done that -and did it well in her time.

We all age, our faces and bodies change with time. The tale of Dorian Gray is well known; beauty should not be the only thing worth pursuing in life.

Our lives are lived in acts and Linda’s face, though still lovely, was always going to change. We live in a youth-obsessed, it’s-all-about-the-looks culture and Linda epitomised that- once. But yesterday’s gone. In this regard it is not a case of what I can’t be today, I can be tomorrow.

Back in 2016, aged 50 when she underwent the CoolSculpting procedure, there can be little doubt she looked wonderful. She may have factored that the likes of Naomi Campbell, Cecilia Chancellor, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patiz and Stephaine Seymour were boldly setting new ground in the call for age diversity on the catwalk. This would have provided a new lease on her stellar modelling career, therefore calling for a spruce up.

The point is, you have to be happy with yourself. You have to come to terms with the fact that father time and the wall are undefeated. Businesswoman and philanthropist Jean-Lowrie Chin talked about this issue earlier in the week saying as we get older, we have to come to terms with our physical and psychological changes. It’s about the journey, not the destination and Linda was doing well on her journey.

The former supermodel says that, as a result of this effort to remove fat, she has been deformed with the procedure having the opposite effect from what she intended. So now she wears hats and scarves to hide her face and says she has gone into a depression.

Most unfortunate.

Yes, Linda is aging but nevertheless remains good-looking. She tried to change the dynamics of what nature had bestowed upon her with modern science and in the process has mutated into what she now regards as a living nightmare.

But this remains a salutary or cautionary tale, depending on how one views it.

Yes, Linda is aging but nevertheless remains good-looking. She tried to change the dynamics of what nature had bestowed upon her with modern science and in the process has mutated into what she now regards as a living nightmare.

Should this define her until the end of her days? It shouldn’t. You get the impression she is a woman of graciousness and that’s a good way to embrace this life.

Fashion models come and go. It is a transitory existence based on physicality. A model’s value is more often than not, determined solely by how one looks. Science can defer that, slow the aging process, retain beauty for a while longer; nature does not. The inexorable march of time confronts us all and we can’t keep cheating it.

Linda’s words are worthy of cogitation. When you think about it ,she is not in fact righting a wrong but has it the other way round; it was making wrong what is always right – what time does to your face and body.

She wrote: “Today I took a big step towards righting a wrong that I suffered and have kept to myself for over five years. To my followers who have wondered why I have not been working while my peers’ careers have been thriving, the reason is that I was brutally disfigured by Zeltiq’s CoolSculpting procedure which did the opposite of what it promised.”

Right there Linda got it wrong. She bought into the best sales pitch known to women, ‘I can make you better than you now are’.

You are taking a chance when you make the move to surgically or chemically alter your state. Luck be a lady tonight!

Linda goes on to explain the misfortune that has befallen her: “It increased, not decreased my fat cells and left me permanently deformed even after undergoing two painful, unsuccessful, corrective surgeries. I have been left as the media has described as  ‘unrecognisable’.”

One would be hard pressed to be able to keep the looks and physique of our 20s as we approach our 60s. Linda did not for one moment consider that the procedure could make her “unrecognisable” but for the worst- a chimera to be shunned, most notably by herself.

She continues: “I have developed Paradoxical Adipose Hyperplesia or PAH, a risk of which I was not made aware before I had the procedures. PAH had not only destroyed my livelihood, it has sent me into a cycle of deep depression, profound sadness and the lowest depths of self-loathing. In the process, I have become a recluse.”

This descension into self-hate is disturbing and one can only hope that beautiful Linda Evangelista can find a way to climb out of this abyss and come to terms with who she really is.