Fighting for transgender rights and raising awareness for the discrimination transgender people face is the model, author and activist Monroe Bergdorf. She appeared on the ITV1 daytime show Loose Women to chat about her story.
Monroe is an English model and activist and has held many prolific roles. She was the first transgender model in the UK for L'Oreal but was dropped by the brand over racial comments. In 2018 she was the LGBT advisor to the Labour party and remained in the role for a month.
Monroe, aged 36, grew up in Essex and after studying at the University of Brighton she worked in fashion PR for three years and began gender transitioning at the age of 24. Monroe became prominent in the public eye when she was employed as the first transgender model to front a L'Oréal campaign in the UK. She was fired - then rehired by the company after U.K. Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Board - after talking about white privilege after the right-wing rally in Charlottesville, 2019.
Since 2019 she has appeared as a guest commentator on ITV morning shows Good Morning Britain and This Morning. In 2022 Monroe joined British Vogue as a contributing editor. You can keep up to date with the latest TV and showbiz news by signing up to the newsletter here.
Monroe is releasing her first memoir, Transitional, where she writes about some of the hardest times of her life.
While appearing on Loose Women Monroe talks about her sexual assault, which is also included in the memoir. She said: "I was sexually assaulted right at the beginning of my transition...society demonises our bodies so much to the point where those men who find us attractive think that it is so wrong that they will do it in secret and often acts of sexual violence on us...I was locked in a room for two hours and raped...it just set me on a really dark trajectory because there was no help."
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