Earlier this month Explore Talent, which describes itself as a "premier online social network for talented people in the entertainment industry", decided it would be a good idea to poll its membership about whether transgender people should be allowed to be models.
Do You Think Transgender Models, like Andrej Pejic, Should be Allowed to Walk the Runway?
68 respondents mostly said yes, that transgender people should be allowed to work as models, walk the runway, and get casting calls for modeling jobs.
The fact that they even had a vote on it really sticks in my craw. I sort of wonder if people currently working in other areas should be allowed to vote to disallow various other groups of people from working in their profession.
Apparently there may be some insecurity in the beauty biz. Is Korean transgender model Cho Han Bit a tad too sexy to compete with?
Or Bosnian model Andrej Pejic may be just too androgynous?
Or Brazilian model Lea T may be unnaturally beautiful?
Valentijn de Hingh has been in front of the lens since she was 8,
followed for 9 years by Dutch documentary filmmaker Hetty Niesch.
Vimeo video interview available here:
VOGUE ITALIA from
MARCO VAN RIJT on
Vimeo.
My feminist roots cause me to look at the beauty busy with a wary eye. It's not like the objectification of the women's bodies, cis or trans, really does anything good for human society. So I can't say I was terribly upset when I first heard that Jenna Talackova was disqualified from the 2012 Miss Universe Canada competition.
Jenna Talackova from Vancouver, British Columbia will not compete in the 2012 Miss Universe Canada competition because she did not meet the requirements to compete despite having stated otherwise on her entry form.
We do, however, respect her goals, determination and wish her the best.
Jenna was selected to be one of the 65 finalists in the "competition". According to
the Vancouver Sun,
Miss Universe Canada contestants must meet a basic requirement of being a Canadian citizen and between the ages of 18 and 27 to compete.
They also must not be married, pregnant, and have to fill out a more comprehensive form if they meet the basic requirements.
There is no mention of rules regarding sex-changes or cosmetic surgery.
I suppose we are to assume it is the "more comprehensive form" which states that contestants must be "naturally born women"…whatever that means.
Are we to assume that women born from in vitro conception are also disqualified? Or women born by Caesarian section? Do they do background checks on these things?
Or does the rule only exist to disqualify transsexual women? If that is the case, then all of the sudden I have a big problem with it. If contestants are allowed to have undergone cosmetic surgery and still compete, then there is no reason to disqualify transwomen except pure prejudice.
Beauty is beauty.
The Vancouver native says she has known she was a female since she was four years old. Talackova began hormone therapy at 14 and had sex reassignment surgery in 2010. Blogs were reporting Talackova's inclusion on the Miss Universe Canada's finalists' page as early as March 13. But her beauty pageant progress was short-lived.
-The Ottawa Citizen
All trace of her existence has been scrubbed from the Miss Universe Canada's finalist's page.
That brings us to the important question.
Would the lady below become ugly if you knew she was born a male?
Or this one?
How do you know they weren't?
Update:
It's straightforward. They made a decision that they want to discriminate against transgender women. More and more people understand this person is a woman. There's nothing about her that should disqualify her.
From what I've read, it doesn't sound like they had any rules. It seems like they made them up on the fly to disqualify her.
It makes you wonder what they're afraid of.
--Mara Keisling, National Center for Transgender Equality