A lot can happen in five years.
Today, we live in the age of women fearlessly coming clean about their cosmetic work – all thanks to brave trailblazers like Bec Judd.
But back in 2020, if you dared to suggest a star had undergone plastic surgery or even visited a Botox clinic, the celebrity sisterhood would grab their pitchforks.
Or, if the scurrilous tabloid article was especially on the nose (sorry – we couldn’t resist!) then you’d best prepare for a threatening legal letter.
Indeed, that’s exactly what happened on November 27, 2020, when we rumbled Nadia Bartel slinking out of surgery with a bandage across her schnozz.
From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the Daily Mail’s new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop.
Back in 2020, Nadia Bartel instructed her lawyers to come after us for publishing photos of her leaving a clinic with a bandage over her nose. She has now come clean about her rhinoplasty
The photos said it all: the former AFL WAG had booked in for a discreet nose job while the rest of Melbourne was distracted by Covid.
Big deal. It hardly makes her an axe murderer.
So when we published the snaps without a second thought, you can imagine our shock when a fiercely worded concerns notice hit our inbox.
For those lucky enough to have not received one, a concerns notice is the first step in defamation proceedings when an injured party outlines to a publisher how they have defamed them and what they can do the redress the issue before it goes to court.
They usually include demands such as correcting or retracting an article, issuing a correction or a small payout to make everything go away.
Sometimes they are worth worrying about. Other times it’s just chancers trying it on because they don’t like their Google results being muddied by unflattering stories.
It’s safe to say the concerns notice sent on Nadia’s behalf by a well-known media lawyer fell squarely into the latter category.
While we cannot quote the letter verbatim for legal reasons, its core complaint was that our article and the photos conveyed the meaning that Nadia had undergone a nose job for solely aesthetic reasons, rather than correcting a medical issue.
Before and after: Nadia Bartel is pictured left in September 2013, and right in October 2021
The letter didn’t not specify what that medical issue might be.
It went on to claim Nadia had been trolled as a result of the article and Facebook post suggesting she had gone under the knife for elective cosmetic surgery.
Therefore, our false, defamatory publications had caused hurt feelings, humiliation and irreparable harm to Nadia’s reputation.
Please.
And how could we repair this irreversible harm to Ms Bartel’s good name? Take the article down right now – and say nothing bad about her ever again.
Gee, I sure hope she wasn’t caught snorting white power of a Kmart plate just one year later while Melbourne was still in the middle of a strict pandemic lockdown…
Oh, wait.
You see, reading between the lines, Nadia’s lawyer said that if their client had gone in for nose surgery, there was no way we could prove it was just for aesthetic reasons.
She could, the letter suggested, have simply been correcting a sinus issue – and so we’d defamed her by suggesting she might have had surgery purely out of vanity.
A terrible, unforgivable suggestion indeed.
Diving into the specifics of her rhinoplasty on the Vain-ish podcast, Nadia (right) said she still ‘wanted it to still look like me’ but ‘ didn’t want anyone to really pick it up’
Which is why we were so surprised to see Nadia interviewed this week on Bec Judd’s podcast, which is all about women speaking candidly about their cosmetic tweaks.
When asked what her most ‘vain-ish’ moment was – Vain-ish is the name of the pod – Nadia responded: ‘I think probably it would have to be getting my nose done.
‘Leaving [the clinic] and having pap photos come out everywhere. So everyone knew… that was fun. It was in 2020, I think.’
And why did she have a nose job? ‘It was crooked. I was always conscious about it.
‘I grew up just not even wanting to wear my hair up because, you know, I was really self-conscious.’
She added that her old nose’s ‘bumpy’ appearance was due to falling on her face playing netball in her youth.
Diving into the specifics of her rhinoplasty, Nadia said she still ‘wanted it to still look like me’ but ‘didn’t want anyone to really pick it up’.
That’s understandable – it is a little galling being papped sneaking into your dad’s car with a bandage on your nose after quietly going under the knife.
But, still, we feel her toothless legal threat is worth calling out all these years later – not because we hold a grudge, but because we believe you have a right to know the sort of tactics celebrities and their lawyers will resort to when they don’t like a story.
Nadia may give ‘zero f***s’ about people knowing she had a nose job these days, but at the time she clearly wasn’t happy with us making it public.
It really makes you wonder how many other stars are out there getting work done – trying to pass it off as good genes, lighting and makeup – and still haven’t come clean.
