The transgender community in the LGBT world is fast growing and making way for future transgender individuals who want to join the entertainment industry.
Celebrities like Jeffrey Tambor and Laverne Cox have not only portrayed what it’s like to live as a transgender person but have advocated for transgender equality and recognition.
Tambor, who is cisgender (meaning that his gender identity matches the sex he was assigned at birth), is most recently known for playing Mort in the popular television series “Transparent.” It shows his journey of coming out to his family as transgender and starting his new life as Maura.
Cox plays transgender inmate Sophia Burset in Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black.” Not only does she play a character in the show who has transitioned, the actress has transitioned as well. She also has a twin brother who has even helped to further portray the stages of a transition by playing Sophia, pre-transition, in “OITNB.”
Actors like these have been advocates in the LGBT community for some time now. In his recent speech at the Emmy’s this year, Tambor asked Hollywood to “give transgender talent a chance, give them auditions, give them their stories.” He went on to say that he would “not be unhappy” if he were the “last cisgender man to play a female transgender on TV.”
Cox has made headlines in recent years as well. She was the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time. Her popularity within the media has also allowed to her to start the conversation of what it’s like to be transgender and how that ties in to race and ethnicity. She has received 13 honors and awards for her work in transgender education, black leadership, gender equality and anti-violence projects.
Breaking away from television, a new transgender specific modeling agency, “Trans Models,” has opened it’s doors. It is first of it’s kind in New York City, and was started by a woman named Peche Di. She herself is a transgender person who has experienced first hand the struggles in the modeling world.
According to an interview with NBC, Di hopes she can protect her models from the negative treatment that she has experienced. She also hopes to make the personalities of her transgender models more apparent in photoshoots and hopes she can start the trend of equality within the modeling world.
As Trans Models’ Garnet Rubio said, “When we are accepted as transgender, it’s like ‘Oh, that’s our transgender model’ or ‘You’ve got a transgender model’. No, you’ve got a ‘model.’”
