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 6’2″, Dove identifies as genderqueer, and models both men’s and womenswear, but doesn’t see it that way.
Speaking to NBC OUT, Dove says:Â “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] struggle… But the violence [they face] really scares me,” she said.”
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