If we asked you to close your eyes and imagine your ideal model, what would be her essential features? A perfect body, a magnetic gaze, full, beautiful lips and the attitude of a femme fatale. And that is just what Valentina Sampaio, our WCW of the week and transgender celebrity model, looks like. Other than working as a model, Valentina has nothing in common with Sara, her most famous colleague. Valentina was born in Brazil, in beautiful coastal town Fortaleza, to be precise, and as can be the case around those parts, her childhood was everything but happy and carefree. Her father is a fisherman, and despite the family’s struggle and modest background, they still managed to give her the love and support she needed, overcoming all sorts of discrimination, together with her daughter. You don’t have to be educated to be smart, and Valentina’s family understood early on that their son didn’t feel comfortable in a boy’s body.
That is how, at 8, Valentina started her journey with a psychologist, who also noted her discomfort with her male body, as she didn’t recognize that body as her own. When she became a teenager, she became Valentina, and also an LGBT icon worldwide. Since she was small, the young Brazilian attracted attention thanks to her beauty, that brought her on the catwalk at 16 already, for the show of the fashion school she attended. But not even the best tarot reader in the world could have predicted where her journey would take her next, from that runway to the cover of Vogue Paris (and that wasn’t even her first cover, since she was already featured on Elle Brasil before that!).
Now that she is everywhere on editorials and on the pages of the best glossy magazines in the world, Valentina has a new aim, that is, to make it at fashion shows, too. And she will surely make it very soon, considering how quickly she rose to the stars. There is nothing else to say, all there is to do is to be happy about how the fashion world seems to be groundbreaking in the battle to break down the barriers for those who are different. Viva Valentina!
All the photos are taken from Valentina Sampaio Instagram profile