The sizzling Top Chef host and model strikes a sensual pose for Vogue's January edition.
She's 40 and a mother-of-one, but Padma Lakshmi is looking as desirable as ever on her latest magazine cover.
In an interview with the fashion bible, she clearly states that she has never looked or felt better than she does today. Lakshmi feels that what you lose in youth, you gain in sex appeal; what gravity takes away, you gain in wisdom.
"My body is a blueprint of my life, of every tragedy, emotional or physical," she states. Whether it's the stitches she got from a handsome doctor when she sliced herself while cutting a potato in Corsica, or the impossible-to-miss seven-inch-long scar on her arm, the result of a car accident in Malibu when she was 14. She wears it proudly now, a badge of survival; and when editor Anna Wintour asked her in 2001 to write about it for US Vogue, she penned an eloquent piece about self-doubt and beauty, and the transformative power of one man's vision.
She acted in the movie The Caribbean, for which she had to gain 20 pounds, and which was a catalyst in cementing her culinary career. "Oh, how easy it was to put on the pounds! And then, of course, I had to lose it. I was 27, and it was the first time I'd had to think about my weight. I wanted to lose it in a healthy way, there was no way I was going to be able to follow a diet." So she tweaked her favorite recipes, and that's how her first book, Easy Exotic, came about.
When Vogue India asked her about her married life with Salman Rushdie, she said, "I do think that as a beautiful woman, people don't want you to be smart. The way I looked may have distracted people. So I had to negate the way I looked. But compared to what I gained, it was a microscopic struggle."
Her daughter Krishna Thea Lakshmi changed her life. "I wasn't trying to get pregnant, I was told I couldn't," says Lakshmi, referring to her endometriosis, a cause she now campaigns for fervently. "It's been such a profound experience. Words seem silly to use. I'm trying to think of something illuminating, but all I can say is that it is by miles the best thing that's ever happened to me. I am amazed by this ability to produce life, to sustain it. I was so afraid I'd lose her, but she really wanted to be here."
The cover shot is the work of renowned lensman Prabuddha Dasgupta, with styling by Anaita Shroff Adajania.
Photograph: Cover of Vogue India, January 2011
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