A Model Risked Her Life and Broke The Law, All For A Photo Shoot

Doing it for the ’gram was just taken a step — or maybe an arm, in this case — too far. A video of Viktoria Odintcova dangling off the ledge of a 73-story building in the United Arab Emirates recently went viral. Why did she do it? For a good photo (and attention, of course).

    The Cayan tower, center — the world’s tallest twisted tower — at Dubai’s Marina on June 11, 2013, in the United Arab Emirates. (Photo: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images)

The stunt, which was all captured on camera, features the Russian model in the risky act with a team of people who appear to be stuntmen and photographers.

The video features the crew practicing on ground, and then arriving at the Cayan Tower in Dubai to do the real thing (without permission)

As if that were not enough of a risk, she then gets down on her knees, while still holding the hand of her “spotter” and then gracefully flops off the rails, the guy’s forearm strength the only thing keeping her from plummeting to the ground.

Somehow, she still looks beautiful, with her T-shirt falling off her shoulders, and her sneakers (they’re not even fancy suction-cupped shoes or something high-tech!) kicking about as if she’s just dangling from the side of a pool.

She lived to share the tale, and has been retelling it to her 3.3 million Instagram followers. “All the stunts performed by professionals, do not try it yourself,” she captioned a clip of the video.

The photos, luckily, turned out amazing (because nothing could be worse more than risking your life for a blurry, thumb-covered shot).

According to Emirati newspaper The National, Odintcova isn’t getting off that easy. An assistant to the chief of police in Dubai said that Odintcova “had been summoned to sign an undertaking not to repeat any dangerous moves that could endanger her life in Dubai.”

However, Odintcova will most like find someplace else. In the past, she’s bungee-jumped in Sochi, Russia, with a camera in hand, and prettily posed on the edge of a cliff in Sri Lanka.

Odintcova could also join other daredevils like Angela Nikolau, another Russian model who last year stepped off the roof of a ridiculously tall building in Guangzhou, China, (in an adorable dress and heels, no less) — and shared it on Instagram, of course.

While the latter are amateurs looking to make names for themselves, top model Coco Rocha puled something similar when she balanced in pink heels on a ledge lots of stories up with no strings attached for the cover of Harper’s Bazaar Taiwan over the summer.

Then she sat on the ledge, saying, “So here we are on set, you think it’s a normal day, until you might be asked to do something like this, and you do it willingly, ’cuz you love the art of fashion,” in her behind-the-scenes video for Instagram. She made sure to add the hashtag #DontTryThisAtHome.

But seriously — don’t.