Cara Delevingne rallies against mainstream beauty standards with shaved head at the Met Gala

'It's exhausting to be told what beauty should look like'

Cara Delevingne at the 2017 Met Gala (Getty)

Throughout the years, the Met Gala has long been synonymous with making bold statements.

From Madonna’s stance against ageism at last year’s event to Rihanna’s show-stopping Commes Des Garcons gown being hailed as a major fashion moment, some also use it to synonymise fashion with making important, personal statements.

On Monday, Cara Delevingne, who has featured in campaigns for just about every luxury fashion house including Burberry and Yves Saint Laurent and is best known for her long blonde locks and trademark eyebrows, debuted her new look after shaving off all her hair.

Sharing a photo of herself at the event – where she wore an embellished Chanel trouser suit and painted her head silver - the model has now rallied against mainstream beauty standards on Instagram arguing that beauty should not be “so easily defined” and called for a wider embrace of personality over looks.

“The more we embrace who we are as people and rely less on our physical attributes, the more empowered we become,” she wrote in a post which has been liked over 1.3 million times.

In another post, the 24 year old she was “exhausted” of being pressurised with conventional beauty ideal and questioned the whole premise on which attractiveness is based.

“I am tired of society defining beauty for us,” she wrote. “Strip away the clothes. Wipe off the make up, cut off the hair. Remove all the material possessions. Who are we? How are we defining beauty?” she wrote in the post which has been liked more than 2.2 million times.

Delevingne was part of the new crop of successful millennial models who a couple of years ago could not be escaped when it came to the catwalk. However, over the last year or so she has departed the fashion world for acting having starred in The Fault Beneath Our Stars and Suicide Squad.

Last year, Delevingne denied she quit modelling but explained she suffers from depression and was a model “during a particularly rough patch of self-hatred”. She said she was taking a break from the industry to focus on acting and was “trying to learn how to not pick apart my every flaw”.