Isis King glided in to Bodek Lounge with ease in five-inch heels, skinny jeans and a sheer green top. Tuesday night, the America’s Next Top Model contestant was poised as she spoke to a group of Penn students about her transgender identity.
Unlike other ANTM contestants, King had male anatomy during filming. However, she said she has known her whole life that she was not meant to be a man. “In elementary school I felt like I was different,” King said. “There were instances in kindergarten where I knew I was a woman.”
King discredits the theory that sexual abuse or neglect causes people to transition. “I did have male figures in my life. My uncles always picked on me and tried to toughen me up,” King said. “I liked guys. They called it gay. I guessed I was gay, but I knew not really.”
Her aunt encouraged her to come out to her mother, but King’s then-stepfather threatened to send her to therapy. King said she knew that if she couldn’t come out, she most certainly could not reveal that she felt like a woman either.
King said she noticed how beautiful the transgenders were on an episode of The Maury Show. She then realized she was meant to transition.
At the Art Institute of Philadelphia, King majored in fashion design. While her roommate was in class, King would wear patent orange heels. Also while an undergraduate, she came out again to her now-supportive mother.
After graduation, while working as a receptionist, King was in the background of an ANTM photo shoot. At the same time, NBC filmed a documentary about King called “Born in the Wrong Body.” Shortly afterwards, Tyra Banks asked her to audition for ANTM. King hadn’t had the corrective surgeries yet but was picked to be the first transgender contestant.
Recently, King had a cameo in a movie with an entirely transgender cast. They were not portrayed as stereotypical “trannies,” she said, but as normal people. She is also designing clothing and writing a book about her life. “I’m like the Hannah Montana of the trans community,” she laughed.
“I feel comfortable being a woman. This is who I am. People who transition don’t pick this decision. They’re regular people, just like everyone else,” she said.
Since having sexual reassignment surgery in February 2009 and breast implants in January, King said she is anatomically female and able to have normal sex. She said her swimsuit shots from ANTM were “edited to look the way they wanted it to look.”
College junior Tony Thieu, co-chair of Queer People of Color, said, “It’s a good start to the QPENN week. It’s great to realize that people are interested in addressing issues of race in the LGBT community.”
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