When I meet Munroe Bergdorf, the transgender activist and model, it’s a bitterly cold January afternoon in Shoreditch. Appropriate weather, since it also happens to be Blue Monday, notoriously the most depressing day of the year and reason enough to make minimal effort in appearance. But not for Bergdorf — she arrives for our interview wearing a full-length, ribbed black dress and heels and a face so perfectly made up it looks airbrushed.
For someone who has half a million Instagram followers and has harnessed social media throughout her career as a tool for change, she is surprisingly a very private person. ‘I won’t share my life on social media,’ she says. ‘This is the way I want to share.’ Bergdorf is referring to her new book, Transitional, a 200-page memoir that takes readers through some of the biggest challenges she has faced, from growing up in (and often running away from) the sheltered village of Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex in the 1990s, to mental health battles and toxic relationships, before eventually finding community in London. For most, penning a memoir at the age of 36 might seem premature — so why now? ‘I think I’m at the point where I’m really coming into a new chapter of my life. While writing the book I realised how much I hadn’t processed [and] I wanted to draw a line under the chaos of my youth,’ she explains.
It couldn’t come at a more pertinent moment. On the day we meet, we are both checking our phones for news alerts. At some point during the course of the day Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is due to make the final call on whether or not to block the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill — which happened, just an hour after our interview. The Bill would have made it easier for trans people to change their legal gender, meaning that they would no longer need to be medically diagnosed with gender dysphoria before obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate.
On the very same day, while the news of the Bill dominated headlines, the Government quietly took further action to crack down on protests, meaning that police would now have the power to shut down protests before they become ‘disruptive’. ‘Whether it’s taking away the bodily autonomy of young people or taking away people’s right to fight for their lives in a way to bring about change, we need to make sure our MPs know what this means on a communal level. People need to be writing to their MPs to make sure that they fight for their constituents,’ Bergdorf explains, ‘and when the time comes around, we need to use our vote to get these bastards out of office. They aren’t only inconveniencing people but [also] infringing on people’s human rights.’
The book’s first chapter, ‘Adolescence’, examines the painful impact of another controversial political bill. Section 28 was the Thatcher-approved bill that banned the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ across schools in the UK from 1988 to 2003. Even if teachers had wanted to support young queer students, they were forbidden from doing so.
As Bergdorf observes, school for her was more a place of indoctrination than anything else. ‘Teachers should be facilitators for kids to have a safe place to explore who they are and not dampen their spark. I came out when I was 14’ — two years before Section 28 was repealed — ‘so I was actively encouraged to be less and less myself.’ It makes sense, then, that Bergdorf’s early memories of queer joy are sparse but etched into her memory all the same. ‘My first memories of queer joy were seeing flashes of it on television or in magazines. I think that’s why I loved fashion so much, because I could always see an element of queerness in fashion.’
These days, children in the UK have to look only as far as school textbooks to find examples of queerness. In 2020, it became law that all schools in England would have to teach about queer topics as part of their curriculum, including gender identity and same-sex relationships. Though scarcely reported at the time, it was momentous for queer people.
It would be fair to say that the former British Vogue cover star’s relationship with the media has not been an easy one. In 2017, while working behind a bar in Brixton, Bergdorf was asked to work with L’Oréal as the brand’s first transgender model. It could have been a watershed moment for both Bergdorf and the beauty giant. Instead, the conglomerate cut ties with Bergdorf days after the campaign was released because of a Facebook post responding to the racist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her post ended: ‘Once white people begin to admit their race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth… then we can talk.’
Bergdorf used the following weeks to fight back, agreeing to TV interviews across all major channels to tell her story. But it didn’t stop the vitriol online: ‘The way I was harassed is something that I’ll never be able to forget. I was constantly thinking that people were watching my house, that they were going to do things to me when I least expected it. Having been raped in my own home, it really triggered me because it had happened to me before, so what was to stop it happening again?’
Transphobic people are consulting on legislation for the trans community, that’s mad
There was also the brief stint Bergdorf had as an LGBT adviser for the Labour Party. After only a few months, she decided to quit the role due to hateful attacks from the tabloid press and some Conservatives. I ask if she would ever re-join the Labour Party’s board? ‘I think it’s a great shame that Keir Starmer isn’t following the advice of transgender healthcare professionals and scientists on what is best for young trans people. So in good conscience I couldn’t be part of it.
‘There are MPs out there, like Zarah Sultana and Dawn Butler, who listen to their trans constituents, but on the whole I feel like policy is being formed that has absolutely no consultancy from trans people. Transphobic people are consulting on legislation for the trans community, that’s mad. We wouldn’t have white supremacists consulting on civil rights for Black people, we wouldn’t have men consulting on what’s best for women.’
So what’s next? Throughout Transitional, she makes reference to never knowing exactly what she wanted to do with her life — there was never one big dream that she worked towards. I ask whether she has an end goal in mind now. ‘I do — I don’t like talking about things before I do them because I’m a Virgo so I’m a perfectionist, but this year will be transformative and transitional in its own way.’
Bergdorf may not have had a big dream growing up. It’s hard to have a big dream when your focus is getting from one day to the next. One of the greatest things about being part of a marginalised group, she tells me, is that there are ‘recorded examples, proof, that there is a way through’. Not only is she proof of survival for anyone feeling what she did while growing up, but a role model who has made their world a less lonely place.
