Real Housewives Of Dubai Star Chanel Ayan Says She Was Bullied For Opening Up About Her Circumcision: I Got So Depressed [Video]

Chanel Ayan was forced to confront her past during an August 2022 episode of The Real Housewives of Dubai‘s inaugural season. While attending a hypnotherapy session with co-star Sara Al Madani, the supermodel, who grew up on the border of Kenya and Uganda, emotionally revealed that she was circumcised as a five-year-old without her mother’s knowledge. Now, more than two years after the episode aired, Ayan is opening up about the mental hardships she faced in light of telling her story for the first time.

In a new interview with DECIDER, Ayan admitted she was “scared” to return to The Real Housewives of Dubai Season 2 because she was “going through depression” as a result of sharing her experience with female genital mutilation (FGM).

The practice, which is described by the World Health Organization as “a violation of the human rights of girls and women,” is defined as the “partial or total removal of the …