Sara Sampaio won't pose nude for men's magazines

23 March 2018

Sara Sampaio won't pose nude for men's magazines.

Sara Sampaio

The 26-year-old lingerie model has appeared scantily clad in the pages of publications such as Vogue, GQ, Glamour and Elle but she won't be stripping off fully for guys' eyes after accusing French entertainment magazine Lui of pressuring her into posing naked for the cover.

Speaking to NET-A-PORTER's weekly digital magazine PorterEdit she said: "I'm fine with nudity. I have done nudity in the past, but I don't do nudity for men's magazines. I can suggest nudity, but I don't want to show my boobs to a men's magazine ... I felt violated. Now every time I'm on a set, do I have to delete the photos to make sure nobody uses them?"

The Portuguese beauty has earned herself the coveted title of being a Victoria's Secret Angel and thinks there is currently a double standard when it comes to a woman's right to "feel sexy".

She said: "I think it's kind of hypocritical that now people want everyone to be equal, they want everyone to be a feminist. But if a girl is being sexy because she wants to be sexy, people are saying, 'Oh, no, you can't be sexy.' Isn't that anti-feminism? Victoria's Secret is not geared towards men - we are selling lingerie to women. We are selling a dream. Everyone wants to feel sexy."

And the model works out with a personal trainer to keep her enviable physique but doesn't feel the pressure from the lingerie company to keep slim.

She said: "It is a lot of pressure, but not from [Victoria's Secret] - I put that pressure on myself. You are constantly in lingerie; your body is constantly on show. You just want to look your best.

"If I could, I would live off pizza, but I can't, because I'm getting old. I miss my 19-year-old metabolism."

Sara is a regular on the runway but doesn't take her modelling privileges for granted because she knows speaking out about feminism might cost her a deal with modelling agencies who want girls to "be pretty and not say a word."

She explains: "Models are expected to show up on set, just be pretty, do our job and not say a word. When we do open our mouths, we're branded as difficult, opinionated, troublemakers; we are told that we don't know what we are talking about. We are still exploited.

"It's such a disposable industry that girls feel like they can't say anything, because there will be some other girl out there who will just do it."