You will have come across a whole lot of crowdfunding pages on the internet – but I guarantee your heart will break just a little bit when you read the one posted by the Mitr Trust.
“We want to have a professional photographer who will take our headshots”…
“Printing postcards at a decent quality is very important to us…”
I immediately think of a dozen professionals whose services are sought on various platforms – except that this one’s slightly different. It sounds like a plea for you and I to listen – and the Mitr Trust is making sure you and I do just that.
The Delhi-based LGBT charity wants to launch India’s first transgender modelling agency and has started a crowdfunding page to get people to help.
Sure, the third gender’s gaining more and more acceptance in academia and in the conversations we have, but there’s one place they’re still invisible – beauty.
After all, if you can have Naomi Campbell strutting her stuff – then throwing Blackberrys at assistants – or a Milind Soman ruling the male modelling world from ‘Made in India’ days to his glorious fifties – then why ever can we not make way for a transgender model?
Rudrani Chhetri, the charity’s founder and head, has this to say on the GoFundMe page, about their dream:
“We want to transform the image of transgender people in India. We are neither male nor female, but a third gender; and we are beautiful. We want to become positive role models for others, so no-one else has to grow up as we did, feeling like there was something wrong with them, and they were the only person in the world born like this.”
Chhetri also goes on to say how “morale is very low” within the community, which is why they want to hold an open casting call for all aspiring transgender models. The aim is to raise an amount of 5,000 pounds. This amount will then be divided between various necessities – such as a professional photographer, a graphic designer, etc.
The trust will ultimately select five models who will then pose for an enviable photoshoot with a top photographer.
Of course, it can take heart from the fact that it has already got a rather strong ace in its kitty – top fashion stylist Rishi Raj.
“I think it’s a great step,” enthuses Raj.
Rishi Raj, Fashion StylistWhat’s funny in the fashion world is that, on the one hand we want to push boundaries and say we’re taking risks – and on the other hand, we keep playing it safe and going mainstream.
“At the end of the day, it’s a shout out,” he explains, “to everyone who believes transgenders are little more than wedding dancers or people who come to your child’s birth. They’re regular people who want to do regular jobs.”
Raj also confirms that the response to the casting call has been crazy and a host of aspirants have applied.
“We plan to hold the auditions in the first week of February,” he says.
If you looked at the photographs on the GoFundMe page, you would see aspiring LGBTQ models in the brightest of clothes, looking like any other aspiring model – strutting, posing, preening, smiling.
Except that they probably need more help than the aspiring model – just to be accepted as equals.
You can visit the GoFundMe page here and help them out.
In the meantime, more power to them.
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