Thando Hopa Portrait Of A Woman

Abigail McDougall speaks to the SOUTH AFRICAN MODEL, LAWYER AND ACTIVIST about her dreams and changing the perceptions of BEAUTY NORMS in the media

- Abigail McDougall

This is not a story about albinism. It is the story of a girl from Johannesburg who dreamed of acting, but became a lawyer instead, because her parents wanted her to pursue a safe career path. It is the story of a tomboyish teenager with a flair for public speaking, who went through a goth phase when she got to university. It’s the story of lawyer, actress, and model Thando Hopa.

We meet in a noisy Cape Town café. She is wearing a normal Saturday-morning outfit: a ribbed black jersey and a wide, red scarf thrown over her shoulders. She’s astonishingly beautiful, and the strong colours contrast with her complexion. Her face is bare except for subtle, metallic lips. She tells me that she’s gradually developed the courage to move away from make-up in both her personal life and on shoots because she wants to be as authentic as she can. It’s immediately clear that honesty and integrity are important to Thando, and that everything that she does is deliberate.

‘I look at modelling as an avenue for achieving a specific outcome that is beyond me: image development, or image diversity, or speaking about specific issues. I see modelling as a way of conscientising people,’ she says.

Thando is a qualified, practised lawyer who models for a living. She never wanted to be a lawyer in the first place. She grew up with dreams of acting: she had a flair for public speaking and studied drama at school. Her parents (an engineer and a film-maker) wanted her to study something that would offer security, so they settled on law as a compromise – Thando felt it would still allow for her to express herself.