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COVER Through her memoir, social media following and appearances on TV, Maria Thattil has offered up her life for self reflection – as well as public examination. Now, the 31-year-old former Miss Universe Australia and Stellar columnist is ready to open up about a new acting role, her romance with Moana Hope, and why she is happy to push the envelope: “I don’t need to shrink myself to bolster someone else’s perceptions of me” This issue marks your second appearance on the cover of Stellar, and this time you’ve posed nude for the cover photo. What was it like to make that happen? I love that, over the years that I’ve been with Stellar, we’ve always been committed to pushing the boundaries. [Stellar has] always gotten behind how I want to self express and the ways that I feel strong and confident and powerful. I loved the shoot. It is definitely in line with what I said three years ago when I became Miss [Universe] Australia – I said I came to shake things up, and I feel like the shoot embodies exactly that energy, so I love it.
This shoot is unapologetically sexy, but you often talk and write about serious and important issues. One surely doesn’t have to discount the other, right? It is just not in my nature to worry about how someone else might perceive that, [or to feel] like I need to shrink myself to bolster someone else’s perceptions of me. I think women are held to standards of scrutiny that make us feel like, to be taken seriously or to get ahead, we need to be palatable, but we can’t be too sexy and we can’t show skin. It is this concept of society wanting us to believe that bodily autonomy will devalue us, or it will cancel out our intelligence, our vision, or our capacity for impact. We’re not allowed to just exist as we are. And so, for me, I love that I can come down to my bare bones for the shoot because I want to, because I’m confident and I choose to.
That choice and agency has always belonged to me, even if there was a period of time in my life when I...