This Is What It's Really Like to Be a Trans Model
Avie Acosta, 20, is a model at Wilhelmina Models, a top agency. She moved from Oklahoma to New York City last year to advance her career and has already walked in New York Fashion Week and landed her first magazine cover. Here, she tells Seventeen.com her story.
Clothes were kind of the first thing that let me find myself. What I was wearing always said so much about me: It's the present, it's what you see. Back home in Oklahoma I did a lot of fashion shoots with friends, just for fun. It wasn't like actually being on set - there wasn't hair and makeup, there wasn't a whole production. But I liked seeing the photos of myself and the different characters and narratives that would emerge. So I decided to pursue modeling as a career - even if I didn't fit into a cookie-cutter mold.
I always loved feminine fashion and beauty.
When I was growing up, I rode skateboards and was into BMX; I played baseball and other sports. But I also would let the girls across the apartment complex paint my fingernails, apply makeup to my face and tie my hair in pigtails. I didn't see anything wrong with that. Luckily, my mom didn't either. She gave me the space to feel things out, to do what I wanted and not feel bad about it. I lived with her until I was in third grade.
By the time I was a teenager, I had moved in with my father and quit sports. I was hanging out only with girls. That was a real problem for my dad. To him, even something as small as taking 30 minutes to get ready was too girly, too femme. I felt like I had to hide, which wasn't healthy and made our relationship really difficult.
I tried to be true to myself. I got comments about my clothes from people at school; they would yell at me in the parking lot. But I dressed in skirts and women's clothing almost every day.
By the end of my senior year, I had done enough research and watched enough coming-out stories - like Caitlyn Jenner's - to understand that my future was femme. That's when I broke it down for my family: This is how you refer to me, this is who I am, this is what I'm doing.
My future is femme.
I lived in Oklahoma for one more year after graduating high school. During that time I began hormone therapy, got a new job and started making enough money to travel. I took a trip to New York during Fashion Week in February 2016 and fell in love with the city - and with modeling.
I got modeling gigs by DMing my favorite designers.
I managed to walk in eight Fashion Week shows during that New York trip, which sounds insane, but I worked really hard to make to make that happen. My main goal was to walk for a designer named Gogo Graham. She's a transwoman who pretty much designs only for her friends and transfemmes. She was following me on Instagram, so I DM'd her to say that I was visiting New York and Oh, I know it's last-minute and maybe she cast her models already, but I really wanted to be in her show. She had finished casting, but Gogo was very kind: She invited me to be a part of it anyway.
I also went through a Fashion Week flyer and looked up all the designers on Instagram to see if they were posting anything about casting. If a casting notice went up, I quickly messaged the designer - and wound up booking a bunch of shows.
Obviously, I needed to move to New York. I knew that if I were there, I'd find opportunities. I had no idea what they would be. That was the whole fun of it.
I moved to New York and found a manager who gets it.
One of the first things I did when I moved to New York City was go off hormones. Mostly it was because I couldn't afford a doctor here. But I also felt that hormones shouldn't define me - a lot of people don't realize you can transition without physically changing anything about yourself. I'm back on hormones now, but that's a personal choice that doesn't apply to everyone. There's no "right" way to transition.
There's no one "right" way to transition.
I started meeting more and more people when I went out. At one party, a friend of a friend asked if I was signed to a modeling agency. I wasn't, but I said that I didn't want to work with just any agency; I wanted to work with a big agency, like Wilhelmina. That friend of a friend invited me to meet his friend Kendall, who worked at Wilhelmina.
I went to the Wilhelmina office the next day. I had been to modeling agencies before. Usually one person takes a few pictures of you and you're out the door in 10 minutes. But at Wilhelmina, I met the whole team and ended up staying for an hour and a half. By the time I left their office, I had a contract in hand.
The thing is: You see me. Maybe you like how I look; maybe you don't. It's about working with people who understand me - like Kendall, who became my manager.
I feel gender should be unimportant in the modeling industry - it's one of my biggest goals. And achieving goals takes drive. It requires actualizing: saying I'm going to do things and then really doing them.
One of my goals is to make gender unimportant in the modeling industry.
All I can say is that for the first time, I'm living a life I imagined. A life where I'm happy. There's good and bad every day, but each morning I wake up shocked and grateful that I get to do what I do - all while being my authentic self. I'm so glad I took this leap.
Elyssa Goodman is a writer and photographer. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram! For more of her work, visit her website.
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