"The right age to have children? When you feel ready." Joan Smalls, cover star of Vogue Italia May issue

Holding a copy of A New Earth by spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, Joan Smalls is beaming. Speaking over Zoom from her apartment in New York, she’s been trying to finish the book—which serves as a prism into the intentional life she’s currently manifesting—since Christmas. But that’s in-between daily check-ins with her family back in Puerto Rico, who she thanks for making sure “there’s never a point where I feel like I'm lost. I can feel like I'm losing my pace, or my footing, but never my centre.”

Despite being hailed as one of the “money girls” and “new supers” by Models.com, as well as one of Forbes “world’s highest-paid models”, Smalls’ eyes glisten when speaking about her family and hometown in Hatillo, Puerto Rico. 

Accounting her childhood in the country for her ability to retain a sense of stillness amidst the fashion industry, a symbiotic sense of calm washes over Smalls when she allows her intuition to guide her, while listening to the wants and needs of her body – a promise that she made to herself since being diagnosed with severe scoliosis at age 13. “I can tell when I'm at the point when I need to take some time off or take a breather, so I know I’ll have to go see my family because seeing them takes me back, and it’s like everything is just how it used to be, and I can just breathe fresh air. They’ve been so supportive of my career, my journey, they've seen the ups and downs, the tears, so they are my biggest cheerleaders.” 

Breaking the stigma

Now focused on a life guided by holistic wellbeing and familial support – despite her 4.6 million Instagram followers – Smalls’ biggest challenge has been a silent battle. Entering her fourth round of IVF treatments, she’s determined to use her platform and influence to break the stigma. 

Part of what helps me stay grounded in this industry is my bachelors degree in psychology. It’s helped me navigate the industry and so many personalities. It’s hard working in an industry where you get nitpicked simply because of how you look, and you’re seen as a product, so you have to detach yourself because that’s where low self esteem can come in, leaving you hating the way you look just because you don’t fit the “beauty” standard. 

Education gave me very good discipline, and that also helped me professionally, especially with the way I moved in the industry. I never wanted to be on the scene, be seen or be around celebrities. I truly saw it as a business and always made sure that I read my contracts. Even to this day, so many of my friends don’t even read their contracts, and I'm like you don’t need to understand everything, I’m no lawyer, but you should become comfortable with the language even if you don't know it. Little nuances like that keep you more business minded rather than just being the face of something. You need to be able to take away from this and have personal growth.

As a model, you are your IP [laughs]!

It was more professional, because I started modeling at what was considered late, at 19-years-old, when other girls start at 16, so that really changed my trajectory. It took a little longer for me and it didn’t come so easy. I also started when the industry wasn’t as inclusive, I was the token black girl, or at best it was me and one other girl. So I had to work twice as hard because I didn’t want the girl behind me to have to, and I wanted the girl in Middle America to see a familiar face and know that beauty doesn’t have to abide by the typical idea of what has been pushed down our throats for centuries and decades, so that was like my purpose. That’s what people need sometimes, hope, and knowing that it can be done. Year after year I started to think ‘wow i’m not ready to be a mother’, and I was seeing my friends become mothers and their career paths changed because being a mother becomes your priority, and motherhood is a beautiful thing. 

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“Are you ready to be that force for change?” Joan Smalls on how fashion can truly become diverse

By Joan Smalls

Everyone’s going through it! It’s so mind boggling to me. When I went to the doctor’s office to start my treatment, I saw so many people from different ages, religions, ethnicities and age groups in that room, and I was thinking wow, we are all going through this but no one talks about it. It made me realise that it’s basically a taboo, because it’s a reminder of my womanhood and whether I'm meant to be having a child at a certain age because society tells me to, and then I have to put my goals and aspirations on the backburner. It’s so many things happening at once that I don't think people understand the pressure of it all. And then that’s just the psychological side of things, then there’s your body [laughs], I was like damn women really are honestly like gods. The power that a woman has, and what she has to balance is astronomical. I look at my friends who are mothers and I feel so proud of them because on one hand they’re raising a new generation, and at the same time they’re balancing work, travel, having a personal life and raising children… It's a lot. 

I was with my ex at the time, and he was extremely supportive, and obviously my family as well. But my family hadn’t ever gone through it, so I realised that I didn’t have anyone to talk to as a bouncing board for this process, or to relay how it was affecting me, and you know, i’m taking these hormones, so I noticed myself becoming aloof, or not focused enough. You go through the process for 10 whole days, and the whole time I was wondering how my body was going to react, asking myself whether I’m going to gain weight or whether my face was going to break out.

In order to have a good pregnancy you need to have around 15-20 eggs, so that’s what the medication is supposed to do, but everyone is different, some produce a little, some produce none, and some produce a lot. The journey is long because you don’t know what to expect. At every appointment they’ll tell you how many are viable, and how many can be saved. And in November, when I did the latest round, they didn’t get any and I was a disaster. I was pumping so much medication into myself, so to not even get a little bit, I became so down, I wouldn’t talk to people, I went into my shell just to not beat myself up. The journey isn’t easy, it’s mentally exhausting. Women are becoming more open but it’s still stigmatised and  it’s a taboo we need to talk about. I kept wondering whether I am going to be looked at differently, will it make me less of a woman. And yet so many of us are going through it that we need each other’s support and encouragement. There are so many layers to who we are and what we do that even social media can’t show those layers. It’s a curated platform, and most of the time when you are going through something, you don't show it. 

This article was originally published on Vogue IT