Victoria's Secret Cast A Transgender Model, Valentina Sampaio — And It's About Damn Time

Victoria's Secret Cast A Transgender Model, Valentina Sampaio — And It's About Damn Time




By Lauren Rearick


For the opening time in the company’s 42-year history, Victoria’s Secret cast a transgender model to appear in one of its campaigns. Valentina Sampaio, a model and actor from Brazil, is slated to appear in a mid-August ad, CNN reported. She teased the shoot with a photograph ostensibly taken on set, and tagged the retailer’s younger-skewing offshoot brand, PINK, in the post.


Though neither Victoria's Secret nor PINK has nevertheless to feature Sampaio on any of its own social streams, her appearance will mark the opening time the lingerie agency has featured a model who publicly identifies as transgender. She previously attended the casting for the brand's televised style show in 2018 however was not booked for the event. (In May the brand reported that it had pulled the 2019 show from network TV.)


The casting is historic, and Alex Schmider, GLAAD Co-worker Director of Transgender Representation, acknowledged the significance of a major industry player finally catching up to 2019. “Global brands are finally taking the initiative to include trans females in the style and retail industry, reflecting the reality of the world we live in,” he told MTV News.


The long-overdue moment of representation doesn’t come without a reminder of the company’s transphobic past. In a November 2018 interview with Vogue, Ed Razek, the now-former chief marketing officer for L Brands, the agency that owns Victoria’s Secret, made a series of transphobic and fatphobic remarks, The Hollywood Reporter noted. Razek both used an outdated term in referring to transgender people and disparaged both the trans and plus-sized communities as soon as asked about why the Victoria’s Secret Style Show was still lacking in diversity.


The comments sparked outrage among clients and the modeling community, and yet Razek later apologized, he remained employed with the agency. It wasn’t up until August 6, 2019, the same week as Sampaio’s casting was reported, that Razek stepped down; he shared his plans to retire in a memo sent to employees, Harper’s Bazaar reported.


Schmider told MTV News that the backlash to Razek’s comments signaled on a world scale that members of the trans community and allies were holding the industry responsible for its failings. “Valentina Sampaio has a major possibility to send an inspiring and affirming message to transgender girls around the world that they belong and show that inclusion is what’s best for brands today,” he mentioned, adding that perhaps a troubled past would signal a brighter future for a business that will hopefully learn from its wrongdoings and oversights.


And other industry power players are already taking notice. The model Carmen Carrera who has appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race and modeled for Rihanna’s lingerie line, Savage X Fenty, told MTV News she’s excited about Sampaio’s new gig. “I am so happy that Victoria’s Secret is moving closer to embracing all females by hiring their first transgender model. I also wish it hadn’t taken them this long. Yet I am cheering for you, Valentina,” she said.


And Geena Rocero, who was the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Playboy, shared with MTV News that it’s more critical than ever for LGBTQ+ people to be represented, particuarly in light of the continued violence against transgender people and the Trump administration’s attempts to deny generic rights to trans people and other members of the LGBTQ+ community  generic rights.


“I will keep on insisting to live my dream, to never settle for what the society might dictate on the limits of what a trans person should and can do,” Rocero mentioned. “I have a strong and resilient trans community, we are going to never back down and we plan to will constantly insist on the dignity and aesthetics of our personhood. The journey of trans people’s lives have so much to teach the world, and that is to persist despite all of the odds, because we have nothing to lose however demand our existence.”


The news of Sampaio’s casting arrived because the entertainment and style industries continued to unveil work that’s more representative of trans people. On August 7, the creator of Rocko’s Modern Life announced that one of the characters in a proposed Netflix reboot could be transgender, and in May, Gillette debuted an ad that featured a transgender artist shaving for the opening time with the help of his father. And Hunter Schafter, a model for Dior, Tommy Hilfiger, Vera Wang, Marc Jacobs, and more, has derived national acclaim for her breakout role in HBO's Euphoria.


there really is definitely still more work to be done as soon as it comes to LGBTQ+ representation, particularly among large movie studios, however Kevin Wong, Trevor Project’s head of communications, told MTV News that he hopes Sampaio’s appearance has positive ramifications around the world. "Some LGBTQ young folks are still unable to safely be themselves, or to freely express their gender identity,” he mentioned. “They can some days look to local and international stages as one of the few ways to be able to see people like them, and this sort of visibility supports the them know they're cute the way they are, and never alone."









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