Woman Crush Wednesday: Adwoa Aboah

Close to clean shaven hair, freckles all over her face, and an intense gaze that bears traces of the fragility of the restless soul within her: Adwoa Aboah strikes you with her puma-like eyes, first, then catches you off guard when she flashes her beautiful smile, illuminated by a tiny diamond at the center of a double C. Of English and Ghanaian descent — her Mother is British and the founder of one of the biggest model agencies in the UK, while her Ghanaian father is a location scout — the 25-year-old model, born in 1992, can already call 2017 her golden year. She collected a string of shows that are just as prestigious as those famous top models would score, and she was also picked as the new testimonial by Versus, alongside Zayn Malik. Her captivating face is currently on the cover of Vogue US, together with Kendall Jenner’s, Gigi Hadid’s and Ashley Graham’s, celebrating diversity in female beauty. As if that weren’t enough, 2017 will probably also be the year her film career, started in 2011 with To.Get.Her., will shoot for the stars: she will be co-starring with Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in The Shell.
It is truly a golden moment for her then, balancing out the difficult times she lived through over her teenage years, during which she suffered from depression and drug addiction, difficult times which culminated in 2015, when she tried to kill herself. «I just didn’t want to be Adwoa and that self hatred is something that I work on on a daily basis», she declared in an intense interview with StyleLikeU. In the same interview, she confessed she started using drugs at 14 and that she only stopped thanks to her parents, who sent her to a rehab center in Arizona where she could finally take care of herself. That was the place where she understood the importance of dialogue and female support — his (female) therapist was essential to her rehab process, as was an older female patient who took care of her as if she were her own daughter. Her stay is in Arizona is what gave her the idea to start Gurls Talk in 2015, an Instagram account and website which allows every woman to discuss her problems, and start a conversation on how she feels about herself, or the society around her. When we are in a tough spot, the idea that there is someone is out there to listen to us makes us aware of the fact that we do mean something to somebody, even when all seems lost, and knowing that we are not alone in our fears makes us feel less alone.