I’ve always loved provoking people; specially those, narrow-minded ones who think they know how the  world is supposed to be. Those with some precise ideas about how women are supposed to behave, how to act when in a relationship, what to wear to fit the society.

Such people exist everywhere, but I must admit that the majority of the population of my home town in Russia, are like that. It was definitely not easy growing up there, as I never quite fit. I wanted to practice extreme sports, and dress not like everyone else. While all my classmates wanted to get married and have kids, my dream was to travel the world and see faraway places. Not to mention BDSM – it was, and still is, a huge taboo. I always knew that my sexuality is somewhat different, but I couldn’t even share it with anyone as I was afraid to get judged.

As a child, I was bullied in school for being a bit strange, and I knew that I’d find a way to pay back later on in life, but not by doing nasty things. Instead,  I just wanted to provoke them by the fact that my crazy way of living my life has a place for existence.

The first thing that I did was The Naked Jump. I started skydiving way back in Russia, as a part of military organization. It was a very strict and conservative place. They were constantly trying to discipline me by telling me to dress in a less revealing way and not flirting with guys around me.  When I decided to move to US, I really wanted to do something majorly “wrong” right before leaving. I got in the airplane all dressed up to skydive, but quickly took off my clothes on a way up, and skydived completely naked with a few guys who came along. I was the first woman to do something like that there and everyone was just shocked to see me landing with no clothes on. I remember how these older women, while hiding their husbands from looking at me, were screaming: ‘what a whore! Get out of here and never come back!” And I was just laughing, knowing that some better places were waiting for me, and that indeed  I won’t ever be back.

Now, I just found another way to provoke the mainstream crowd of my hometown. I gave an interview to a popular local magazine. I told them all about my life and my relation to BDSM. I shared all my love and passion to my work in that interview and I knew that there would be mobs with torches and pitchforks after me.

Once the September issue came out, with me on the cover, there were lots of complaints. As I expected, many people shared on local forums that they were shocked to see me shamelessly describing how I enjoy practicing such a taboo work. Many of them were angry, denouncing me for my “sins” and calling me names.

However, that only made me happy!  Why? Because deep down inside, many people have some abnormalities, darkness, or kink. We are all taught to be normal and to follow trends of society, to conform, and most of us found that blending in is the easiest way to be accepted. However, these strange dreams and desires most of us have, are still there, hidden, asleep, just waiting for a moment when it’s safe to be exposed. However, it’s hard to explore your weirdness when everyone else is so normal, so average.

By showing myself as an example, my wish is to motivate people. To get them to think: “Hey, if she wasn’t afraid to do all these crazy things, why can’t I do it? Maybe I can explore my kink or climb mount Everest, despite my peers calling me stupid?”  I’d love to suggest to people in some less open-minded places there is a way to dare to be different, and to eventually succeed.

Here is the full version of my interview – in case you read Russian or using google translate

http://issuu.com/cult_person/docs/cult_person_9/0