Model Bella Hadid Is the Queen of Crying Selfies and We’re Here for It

Here’s one type of photo that you don’t typically see on a model’s Instagram: Crying selfies. But for supermodel Bella Hadid, posting these photos serves as a reminder to both herself and her followers that not everything on social media needs to look beautiful.

The 25-year-old recently sat down with The Wall Street Journal, to which she opened up about her mental health and the reason why she feels the need to share teary-eyed selfies with her fans.

In November 2021, Bella shared a carousel of photos and videos to Instagram. In the first slide, she shared a clip of Willow Smith speaking about mental health, followed by a series of images of herself struggling with her own mental health.

In a lengthy caption, she praised the Red Table Talk star: "I love you and your words. It made me feel a little less alone and that’s why I’d like to post this," she wrote, calling out a few of her favorite lines from Willow.

Bella then took the remainder of the space to share a few of her own musings on mental health in conjunction with social media. "Social media is not real. For anyone struggling , please remember that. Sometimes all you’ve gotta hear is that you’re not alone," she wrote.

In January, Bella revisited this post when speaking with the WSJ and explained that it wasn't her original intention to post such raw and unfiltered photos on Instagram. The truth is that she had taken these pictures to send to her mom or doctor whenever she had trouble finding the words to explain how she was feeling,

"I would just be in excruciating and debilitating mental and physical pain, and I didn’t know why," she said, noting that these selfies were snapped over a period of three years.

When she finally did work up the courage to start sharing these once-private photos with the world, "it was to make sure that anybody that was feeling that way knew it was OK to feel that way. Even though on Instagram things look so beautiful, at the end of the day, we are all cut from the same cloth," she told the outlet.

Posting these snaps of her real self online proved to be very therapeutic for Bella. "That post made me less lonely because I had a lot of people that have reached out saying, 'I feel that way too.' Walking outside, being able to remember there are so many people going through things and have similar patterns to me, it makes me feel better," she said.

Bella has previously opened up about having Lyme disease. She also struggles with anxiety and depression, brought on by the unreal amount of pressure she's put under 24/7 to always look good. She says that zoning out all of the negative comments about herself has helped. and that she's ultimately been in a better headspace in 2022.