It has been raining in Paris for almost three weeks when Natalia Vodianova logged on to Zoom in mid-May, but she is holding on to the ethereal glow that made her a world-famous model and gave her the flat -form to make something out of it. Even projected in a faded gray light clouded by finicky WiFi, her resolution radiates off the screen: she really, really wants to talk about the periods.
Born in the Soviet Union, the 39-year-old has always cared and worried about the dangerous influence of shame. Her younger sister, Oksana, was born with ASD, “so she says, shame and stigma is something that really makes my blood boil – really any kind of inequity.”
Especially as a woman, she was not even fully aware of the shame she carried until she became an adult. When her modeling career took off in her twenties, she found herself traveling the world, staying in…
