Lily Cole has revealed she wrote a 'Post-it Note contract' to split childcare 50/50 with her partner when she was pregnant with their first child.

The model, actor, activist and now author shares four-year-old daughter Wilde with her tech-entrepreneur partner Kwame Ferreira.

In an interview with The Guardian over the weekend, she said she created the contract 'part in jest (but in spirit very serious!)' after reading an article about how parents-to-be rarely discuss childcare arrangements before the baby is born.

'It really rang out to me,' Cole told the newspaper, adding that 'it works really well' and she would 'highly recommend it'.

'I'm not saying everyone has to make that choice or do the same division we decided on,' she said, 'it's not a rigid thing, more a loose understanding that we try to honour.'

Her reasoning is clear: 'I’m not saying I’m against, in any form, women taking time out to look after their children; if that’s what they want to do it’s a beautiful decision to make. The point I’m making is, I think ideas about who is responsible for the children have a big impact on gender parity for women. I’m not saying there’s a "right" way to do it; I’m encouraging parents to be conscious of what they want, rather than slipping into what their parents did. Or what their grandparents did.'

Cole also spoke about the darker side of modelling, after being scouted outside a burger restaurant in London's Soho when she was 14.

She refused to wear fur for a campaign when she was 17, and challenged a major jewellery company over diamond mines in Africa.

'Eventually saying no to fur cost me work, but it was a fairly straightforward choice to make: little boxes on contracts, usually appearing next to "No Nudity",' she said. 'I felt an enormous responsibility to understand and respect what I was selling. I wasn’t just buying the companies’ products, I was asking other people to buy them too.'

You can read The Guardian's full interview with Lily Cole here.

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