Miss Benny has shared her journey as a Transgender woman.
In a raw essay for TIME Magazine, the Glamorous star revealed that she is a transgender woman and detailed how she navigated her personal and professional life while transitioning.
In her essay, Miss Benny explained how she grew up in a conservative Christian household in Texas, and the transition was not easy for her.
“Let’s just say I’m one of those girls who grew up in a religious Texas household where queerness was totally not the vibe,” she wrote in the article published Monday, June 26.
“By 8 years old, I was praying every night to wake up and somehow be like my sisters. In the morning I would wake up in the same body, and cry. Over time I became highly aware of how unwelcome LGBT topics would be in my hometown. And so I kept my head down and looked for an immediate escape.”
So, she went to Los Angeles to find herself and start her career as an actor. However, she was rejected several times because she said Hollywood wasn’t ready for someone like her.
When Miss Benny was 19, she received a call for a role in Glamorous – she played the role of Marco Mejia, a non-binary makeup artist who works as an assistant to a makeup mogul played by Kim Cattrall.
“At my first audition, I arrived as a diet version of myself so as not to subject myself to the usual rejection I’d faced. But this time, I was met with the encouragement to be myself and let my full femininity shine. They told me in the room that the role of Marco was mine, and I fell to my knees with tears in my eyes,” she wrote.
But the show only moved forward once Netflix came forward and picked it up.
“Netflix came onboard. In fact, the only concern was ever about my own personal comfort and, funnily, whether or not the pitch of my voice would change over the course of filming (lol!),” Miss Benny wrote in her essay. “And so, from that moment on, I worked closely with Jordon to ensure the authenticity of Marco’s identity in the show.”
“In the year since we shot the series, the political space—and specifically the anti-trans movement—has been so overwhelming,” she continued. “I’ve started to feel a sense of, ‘Wow, this show is going to come out, and with that, I too will be coming out. I don’t know if I’m ready to be this vulnerable.’”
She wrote that she was reluctant to come out with her truth on such a huge platform during a politically challenged time.
“But then I am reminded that this fear is exactly why I wanted to include my transition in the show,” she noted. “I know that when I was a terrified queer kid in Texas, it was the queer joy I found in droplets online that guided me to my happiness. And if someone like me is out there feeling the weight of being othered, I want them to have a place they can see someone like us thrive and be celebrated.”
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Source: TIME Magazine
