Geena Rocero has been modeling for nearly a decade. She was a beauty pageant queen in the Philippines when she was 15 years old and got signed to NEXT model management at the age of 21 in New York – which doesn’t sound like too unusual a story for an aspiring model. But Greena’s story isn’t as typical as it first might seem, because she was actually born a man.
Despite nearly ten years as a successful model, Geena only came out as transgender last year, because she feared she might irreparably damage her career. But on March 31, in honour of the International Transgender Day of Visibility, Geena gave a pretty incredible TED talk about her experience of being a transgender woman working in the fashion industry – which has just gone live on the site.
‘For the last nine years, some of my neighbours, some of my friends, colleagues, even my agent did not know about my history,’ Geena says about the decision to come out. ‘This is called a reveal, here is mine. I was assigned boy at birth based on the appearance of my genitalia. I remember when I was five years old in the Philippines ... I would always wear a †-shirt on my head, and my mum asked me, “Why do you always wear a T-shirt on your head?” and I said, “Mum, this is my hair, I’m a girl.” I knew then how to self identify. When I first moved to the United States to work as a model, and I finally had the opportunity to change my name and gender marker, I felt as though my outside self finally matched my inner truth.’
More inspiringness (is that a word? is now...) in the video below.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.