Meet the Beauty Who Could Become Victoria's Secret's First Transgender Model
is having her moment. Ever since twirling onto the pop-culture stage as a scantily clad contestant on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in 2011, the New Jersey native, born a boy named Christopher, has been enjoying a fast ascension as a model.
After publicly transitioning to female after her stint on the reality show, Carrera has signed with Elite Model Management, walked the runway for designer Marco Marco during last month’s LA Fashion Week, and been featured twice in W magazine, most recently in a 13-page spread shot by Steven Meisel for the September issue.
Now she’s the subject of a Change.org petition created by fans to request that Victoria’s Secret sign Carerra as the brand’s first transgender model. The effort has already garnered more than 20,000 signatures — and a slew of supportive comments — since its creation by Marco Regalado of California on Monday.
“I'm amazed!” Carrera wrote on Facebook on Tuesday in response to the fast-growing support. “And just to make it clear, this petition is not to force VS to do anything. It's to prove that the world is ready for change and possibilities are endless!” Victoria's Secret did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Yahoo Shine.
“Gender does not exist in terms of beauty,” Carrera notes on her website. And judging by the recent swell of transgender visibility in the modeling world, she seems to have a point.
Androgynous Serbian male model Andrej Pejic (who scored the cover of Serbian Elle earlier this year) first broke ground in 2011, when she walked both the men’s and women’s runways for Jean-Paul Gaultier; that’s the same year transsexual model Lea T of Brazil appeared on the cover of Brazilian Elle, and Dutch Valentijn de Hingh was featured in the pages of Italian Vogue.
Trans beauty queen Jenna Talackova forced Donald Trump and his Miss Universe Canada pageant to end its ban on transgender contestants in 2012. And more recently, two non-transgender bio-girls, Elliott Sailors and Casey Legler, have found success working as male models — which wouldn’t surprise the supporters of Carrera’s Change.org petition.
“Gender in America is reaching a point where it is no longer important what you were born as but what you make of yourself, and Ms. Carrera is a stunning example of that,” notes signer Jered Lawson of California. “Anyone who has dreams should sign this.”
