Victoria's Secret Embraces Inclusivity, Hires First Trans Model
August 07, 2019DMT.NEWS#DMTBeautySpot #beauty
Valentina Sampaio Becomes First Victorias Secret Transgender Model
For some time now, the modeling industry has been rife with accusations from activist critics and social justice lobbies toward many of the titans of the business — from Playboy to Vogue to Victoria's Secret — concerning the commodification of women, the promotion of impossible beauty standards and the exclusion of women of color and transwomen from the dialogue. Now, at least one positive change is being made in the right direction. Victoria's Secret has just contracted their first transgender model.
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This milestone follows years of lukewarm or apathetic responsiveness to the notion, with CMO Ed Razek leaving Victoria’s Secret after making transphobic remarks in a 2018 Vogue interview.
“Do I think about diversity? Yes. Does the brand think about diversity? Yes. Do we offer larger sizes? Yes. It's like, why doesn't your show do this? Shouldn't you have transsexuals in the show?” Razek said in the interview. “No. No, I don't think we should. Well, why not? Because the show is a fantasy. It's a 42-minute entertainment special.”Now, Brazilian model Valentina Sampaio has been hired as the first transgender woman to earn her Victoria's Secret Angel wings, and she couldn't be happier with the news. Taking to Instagram to share a picture of herself in hair and makeup for, presumably, a hot session with the lingerie brand, Sampaio was certainly making a statement which will echo throughout the beauty and fashion business as a whole.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Valentina Sampaio (@valentts) on Aug 1, 2019 at 8:10am PDT
Sampaio also attracted a great deal of support on Instagram as well, seeing trans actress Laverne Cox and fellow Victoria's Secret models Lais Ribeiro and Elsa Hosk show up in the comments to offer her their enthusiastic backing.
“Wow finally!” Cox exclaimed of the big step forward for the model — and for the embattled fashion brand.
Ribeiro and Hosk used various lovely emoji to make their show of support for Sampaio plain for all the world to see.
While Sampaio may be breaking ground in terms of wider public acceptance of transgender people in the modeling business, trans folk still face a great deal of discrimination and stigma. Per the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 29 percent of those polled were living in poverty, and 15 percent were unemployed — both poverty and unemployment numbers falling well above the national average.
Perhaps even more heartbreaking, approximately 33 percent of transgender people surveyed admitted to having been homeless at one point or another. That's to say nothing of a strikingly problematic suicide rate — 40 percent of all persons who identified as trans had tried to take their own life at one point, which is nearly 10 times the average rate.
With Geena Rocero having posed for gentlemen's magazine Playboy in 2017 — openly trans all the while — and Sampaio now making headlines, it looks like the future is at least a little bit brighter for those transgendered individuals looking to make a lifestyle (and perhaps a career) in the modeling biz.
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Christina Majaski, Khareem Sudlow
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