Bella Hadid is reflecting on the off-runway pressures she faced as a young model.
The 24-year-old graces the cover of Vogue's September 2021 issue—along with Lourdes Leon, Precious Lee, Kaia Gerber, Anok Yai, Ariel Nicholson, Sherry Shi and Yumi Nu—as part of a group of models that the magazine said, "make the moment."
In her cover story interview, Bella looked back on the early days of her modeling career, which skyrocketed when she was just 17 years old. As Bella explained, she felt pressure to project a certain image while trying to figure out "who she was."
"It's like there were two Bellas," she explained. "Me, this person in the process of figuring out who she was, and ‘Bella Hadid' the alter ego, who was—I dunno—a sexbot who goes out every night?"
Additionally, the Savage x Fenty model also opened up about her struggles with having social anxiety as a public figure.
"I have insane social anxiety," Bella said. "Partying is not my thing, but I felt enormous pressure to project that image because I assumed that's all people wanted from me. Now I don't want to live in that box. I definitely feel like I'm allowed to speak."
Bella also opened up about her social anxiety back in 2018 when she appeared on her mother Yolanda Hadid's Lifetime series, Making a Model. "I would literally start crying and shaking if I had to do interviews at red carpet events," she said. "It was really nerve-racking and it's scary."
The young supermodel also revealed that she would sometimes "blackout" when she walked a runway, explaining, "I would come out and be like, ‘Oh well, I guess it's over.'"