Adriana Lima has announced she will no longer be taking off her clothes for an “empty cause.”

The Victoria’s Secret Angel took to Instagram to explain she wanted to help change the narrow body ideals imposed on women.

The mother-of-two vowed to make this change in “the name of my grandma, my mother and all her ancestors that have been labelled, pressured” and misunderstood.

“My job puts me in such big pressure to look a certain way, I was thinking, how we women have to carry so much,” she wrote.

“I am tired of the impositions, we ‘as women’ can’t be continuing living in a world with such superficial values, it’s not fair for us, beyond fair, it’s physically and mentally not healthy what society [is] imposing to ‘us’ to behave, to look.” 

 

Lima was prompted to take this step after a friend told her she was “unhappy with her body.” 

She had been offered a job in which she’d star in “a sexy video” to be “posted and shared on social media,” and she realised she’d had a change of heart about the types of modelling gigs she was willing to accept. 

In her Instagram post, Lima wrote: “Even though I have done many of this type, something had changed in me.”

“I realised that majority of women probably wake up every morning trying to fit in a stereotype that society/socialmedia/fashion etc imposed.” 

The post concluded: “I decided to make that change… I will not take off my clothes anymore for a empty cause.”

This statement comes only a couple of weeks after the model walked the Victoria’s Secret runway in Shanghai as head Angel. 

The lingerie brand has recently caught some flack for not featuring women of fuller figures on their famous catwalk, as Ashley Graham is not shy about pointing out. 

Thus Lima’s point was not so much about quitting modelling, as it was a comment on society’s unfair standards being continuously projected onto women. 

It seems the majority of followers applauded Lima’s decision, with one saying that they “so needed to hear this.”

Another wrote: “This is empowering heart and mind, and a way of thinking at its finest/greatest.”