What draws McCoy to modeling has more to do with her love of art, which she studied in school along with a concentration in classical poetry. But no, I didn’t let it cause me any kind of real gender identity crisis because, again, it’s clothes.” But in the same vein, I’m very hard pressed to be made uncomfortable by clothing because, again, I just don’t take it nearly as seriously as a lot of other people might in the sense that I see it as costume and drag, and it’s fun to dress up and it’s kind of fun to inhabit these different characters at times. I don’t think I’m ever going to be the kind of person that embraces uber-femininity to the extent that maybe the fashion world or modeling industry would hope I would do. “I’ve always kind of touted a fluidity about myself that I’m pretty proud of, and on a day to day basis, I feel differently about who I am and how I feel-whatever.
“I am someone who doesn’t identify entirely with one end of the gender spectrum,” Mccoy said. McCoy acknowledges that fashion is, for her and many others, much more than that, and should embrace more of a playful element than a rigid one. They are genuinely constructs, things that we came up with and made up and assigned to people and had no one told you what to wear, you might not have worn that dress or that suit.”īut this season of “Top Model” majorly focuses on portraying sexy choreography in faux music videos and exuding a high femininity that fails to extend to all areas of the modeling industry. “You go in your closet and you put your gender on every day. “People like Erika Linder who really can kind of do both sides of it-that was my goal when I first started working in the fashion industry, was to prove that gender really is a drag, like the old Judith Butler gender performativity thing,” McCoy said. Yet, androgynous models like Linders and Leglers still play with feminine looks. While on the show, Kyle was frequently femmed up more often than she was given the opportunity to fully embody the kind of model she really is-one more akin to the Erika Linders and Casey Leglers of the industry than the Gisele Bündchens.
And yeah, at times it definitely felt like they might have been mocking me but I can’t say that’s 100 percent true or my own securities being projected.” “If they did happen to come out looking androgynous in certain photos, they would ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at times, but it wasn’t something they were tested to do or forced to do. “I do find it a little bit funny that my androgyny was something they were alleged to be celebrating about me at the beginning of the show and embracing and then they did kind of do everything in their power to repress it at times while also not really having the expectations of the other contestants to do what I do, or to embrace their masculinity in any real way,” McCoy said.
The formula of a show like “America’s Next Top Model” (at least in the current season) isn’t necessarily friendly to models like McCoy, who face some challenges that rarely translate to their more feminine-presenting peers. photos via Vh1Ī recent graduate of Rollins College, McCoy, the New York-based top model contender, was frequently compared to Ruby Rose by the judges’ panel, an often incorrect and lazy juxtaposition seemingly based on their shared non-binary aesthetic more than anything else.
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In the past, out women like Kim Stolz, Kayla Ferrel, Megan Morris, Elina Ivanova and “Empire” star AzMarie have competed on the series-all offering varied depictions of what queer women (read: models) look and act like in “real life.” After a brief hiatus in the wake of creator Tyra Banks’ stepping down, network Vh1 revamped the series with a new host, Rita Ora, but still maintained the show’s reputation for inclusiveness with a slate of queer contestants appearing on this season, including androgynous bartender Kyle McCoy. “America’s Next Top Model” has consistently been one of the most queer-friendly reality competition shows, home to LGBTQ judges, designers and, of course, contestants.