A pop culture artifact: Remember that time 16 year old Bella Hadid got a DUI? And her mom wrote a letter saying she found bloody, dirty underwear, empty pill bottles, beer cans, in Bella’s car?
NOTE: this was originally posted in the r/popculturechat subreddit on March 3 2022, but I decided to make it a post across platforms for posterity.
Now, I remember this letter coming out in 2013 and reading it and being like WHATTTT.
Basically, on one of the early seasons of RHOBH, it was shown on an episode that Yolanda found out that Bella got a DUI while she in Spain with Kyle, and Yolanda is shown flying home to deal with it.
Afterwards, Yolanda wrote in her bravo blog:
“I got out my laptop and wrote Bella the longest letter I have ever written and shared with her all that I felt in my heart and needed her to know. I explained to her how much she meant to me and how fatal this mistake could have been.”
She also wrote in the same post:
“I decided to take her phone away, make her pay for her own lawyer bills from her savings, and we sold her car. The court suspended her license for one year, she received six months probation, and was required to conduct 25 hours of community service and 20 hours of AA meetings. Bella has always been a very conscientious child, so dealing with a heart filled with regret plus the consequences and shame of her actions has been a tough burden for her to bear. Life taught her that sometimes good people make bad choices but that it doesn’t mean they are bad people…it means they are human.”
I saw a comment on a real housewives reddit post from 6 years ago about this, which said the following:
“Not long after Yo’s blog post, an email showed up around the web that was revealed as Yolanda’s letter to Bella. I’m not sure how anyone would have gotten it, but… the tone sounds JUST like Yolanda (coming from someone who reads her bravo blogs on the regular), and the spelling and grammatical mistakes seem consistent with someone whose native language is dutch (versus the kinds of spelling mistakes native spanish speakers make). BTW, that is not shade! I think Yolanda’s command of the english language is damn impressive and probably better than my command of dutch would be.”
Anyway, so the email.
Here are the screenshots:
And if the images for some reason don’t show, here’s the text from the pics above:
Bella, I just got your car back from the pond and I was looking for your purse as I stumbled on the most disastrous car I have ever seen in my entire life….. Now I am really in tears and really scared. Who are you? What were you thinking? You have literally turned into a spoiled, unthankful, unthoughtful, careless human being that is lucky to be alive.
What an eye-opening experience to find beer cans, pink kittie bottles with vodka, bottles with Aderall, Vyvanse, rolling papers, and a car full of dirty clothes, dirty underwear with blood stains, tampax. I have honestly never seen anything like it.
Was your life that terrible at home? I am at loss for words. You need to do some serious soul surging Bella to see how you got where you are and then get on your knees and thank god for still being alive!!!
How can someone as kind, beautiful and smart as you end up in this kind of a mess? I have really failed as a mother and that is just the honest truth. How did I trust you were ok? Am I that stupid and naive? Or are you that good of a liar? WHY Bella? What have I done to deserve this? I am so freaked out. How are you going to survive?
Why am I even working my ass off to get you in a beautiful apartment if you can not even keep your car clean? Is that how you are going to trash your home? If your car looks like the way you feel about yourself you really need professional help. I thought that together we were going to be able to work through this but now I am not sure anymore if I have the tools to help you unless you are really understanding what this has come too. I need answers and explanations answers and explanations Bella.
Start writing and tell me what is going on inside of you because I need to understand. Where are you at and what are you going to do to change? Do you even want to move to NY? Maybe you should live in the dorm for the next year and see how real people live in order to appreciate the extraordinary life you have lived. I love you so much but if you could feel the pain I feel right now you would fall to the floor.
I just don’t understand how little respect for life you have and how little you understand about how delicate it is. I know you know right from wrong, I know you know how to live a clean and conscious life because you saw me live it. I am not asking you to be perfect but I am asking you to respect the life I have given you. There is nobody and nothing more important for me to see you thrive and be happy.
You have so much to give Bella, you are such a bright light. Everybody I meet that has only met you for a minute remembers you and compliments on what a extraordinary person you are. I literally can not live without you Bella, I am so attached to you in ways that you will never understand until the day you have your own Bella. I beg you to please change your life. If you love me, Gigi and Anwar you should think about how you conduct yourself. Do you want Anwar to take the same chances you have taken? Would you want your little brother to drive around with a car like you left behind? Are you an example of the life you want him to live? I cleaned your car and destroyed all the evidence of a chaos you created that I am ashamed off and truly hope to never see again. Life in my home has changed forever. Poor Anwar his life is going to be miserable.
Bella later went on and addressed this in an interview, saying it was caused by her Lyme disease:
Bella was diagnosed in her junior year of high school. ‘I stopped driving because I kept crashing, because my brain just stopped working.’ She had an accident — ‘It was when I first got sick. It was a dark time’ — which was reported in the press as a DUI. ‘I was exhausted all the time. It affected my memory so I suddenly wouldn’t remember how to drive to Santa Monica from Malibu where I lived. I couldn’t ride. I was just too sick. And I had to sell my horse because I couldn’t take care of it.’ It was an emotional blow on top of the physical.
Weird that Yolanda’s letter to Bella didn’t mention Lyme at all.
And if the letter was fake… its weird that Yolanda wrote on her blog post that Bella was going to AA meetings, nothing about Lyme in the blog post either. IDK . Both people involved here handled this very messily from my perspective. Yolanda put a ton of pressure on her daughters.
Author’s Note: I originally posted this on the r/popculturechat subreddit on March 3 2022, but decided to make it a post across platforms for posterity. I saw today (3/15/22) that a new Vogue interview with Bella just came out where she talks about having anxiety and depression, as well as an eating disorder in high school.
I definitely feel for her in that regard, and hope she’s found some peace and happiness, with her relationship with her mother and most importantly – with herself.