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Allure has a brief interview with Laverne Cox that has a lot of good quotes. It came out a little while ago but I’m just seeing it now. She talks about transgender visibility and how that’s improved so much since she was growing up. Her inspiration as a young adult was Iman! That was the supermodel heydey and Iman embodied that aspirational look and attitude. Laverne says that at this point in her life she’s never felt more beautiful. She’s said this before and I really like how she explained it here, as more of a spiritual thing. She also talks about her minimalist makeup recommendations if you’re into that. Allure has her products here. Here’s some of what she told them:
On trans visibility
“Because I’m a black trans woman,” she says, “I’m at the center of a culture war.”“We are at an unprecedented moment of trans visibility,” she says, “where trans people are being cast in roles that are not just trans and where our stories are being told with such humanity.
On being inspired by Iman
“I remember lying in bed with Jet magazine next to me,” Cox says. “The woman on the cover was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen. She was wearing a diamond headdress and pink eye shadow. She looked like royalty.” But it was the woman’s regal air — Cox later discovered it was Iman — that made her stand out. And it was something Cox wanted to emulate.She recalls the moment she recognized a similar beauty in herself: “Around ’97, I got these honey-colored loose braids, and I felt like something shifted. I came out of a shell and introduced myself as Laverne for the first time.”
On aging
At 47, Cox exudes her own queenly aura. “I honestly feel like I look better than I ever have,” she says. “This feeling of oneness with yourself and the universe comes with age, and it makes you look better.”
I feel like I’m the best I’ve ever looked at 47. I know it’s not objectively true, it’s just that I feel strong and capable, and more myself than I ever have. She captured that feeling and awareness well. As for trans visibility, one of my favorite shows is AMC’s Dispatches from Elsewhere, which was created by Jason Segel and features Richard E. Grant and Sally Field. There’s a transgender actress, Eve Lindley, who plays a vulnerable yet guarded character to a T. Her gender isn’t brought up in the show at all because it’s not about that. I’d like to see more representation like that, and Laverne is one of the best advocates.
