This genderqueer model has got the best answer to ‘do you pose as a woman or a man?’
Transgender fashion model Rain Dove has opened up in a new interview about modelling both men’s and women’s collections.
Standing tall at 6ā2ā³, Dove identifies as genderqueer, and models both men’s and womenswear, but doesn’t see it that way.
Speaking to NBC OUT, Dove says: “When I model, I don’t model as a man or a woman. I model as just me in this body. I’m just trying to fit an artistic aesthetic.”
“My body is not who I am. You could cut off my arm, you could take my genitals, you could take my organs, and I’d still be [me],” Dove adds.
Having grown up in Vermont and having briefly been a firefighter, Dove says she has been pepper-sprayed three times in women’s restrooms.
She has also been tasered.
“You can’t even be mad at [them], because in their minds they are protecting themselves from a 6-foot-2-inch tall frat boy. That’s what a lot of them think,” she said.
The 26-year-old Rain Dove, signed up with Major Models as a model for both menswear and womenswear back in 2014.
Of bills like North Carolina’s HB2, which bans trans people from using a gender-appropriate bathroom, Dove says: “I am not transgender, but at the same time I get treated like I am. I have a lot of the fear, but the thing I have that backs me up is my ID. I have my breasts. I have my vagina. I can prove [my gender]. I can’t identify one 100 percent with [the transgender community’s] struggleā¦ But the violence [they face] really scares me,” she said.”
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