A Nepali who will become the first transgender model to walk the runway at an Indian fashion show hopes to inspire other victims of gender identity discrimination across conservative South Asia.
Anjali Lama, who was born a man in rural Nepal, was ostracized by members of her own family after telling them twelve years ago that she wanted to live as a woman.
She overcame abuse and prejudice to become the Himalayan country’s first transgender model and is now preparing to strut the catwalk at Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai, India’s premier fashion show, next month.
Photo: Tandem Communications/AFP
“Growing up in Nepal as a transgender was extremely difficult,” Lama, 32, told AFP in an e-mail interview ahead of the fashion extravaganza, which runs until Sunday.
“In South Asian countries people still aren’t that accepting, they treat it like an illness. The public looks at you differently and treats you in a different manner,” she said.
Lama was born Nabin Waiba to a family of poor farmers in remote Nuwakot in mountainous Nepal.
Photo: Tandem Communications/AFP
But she always knew that she had been born in the wrong body and in 2005 took the decision to dress as a woman for the first time. “I knew I couldn’t feel like another person living in someone else’s body. Hence, I was ready to face the cruel words that people threw at me,” said the model. “Most of the people, including my own brothers, weren’t ready to accept me for who I was. I had to stay strong and believe in myself. My mother and sisters were the only ones who supported me throughout.”
Lama found some acceptance in Kathmandu, where she moved to study, and later became an activist for an LGBT rights group called Blue Diamond Society.
She underwent partial sex reassignment surgery in 2009 and her interest in modeling was piqued the following year when she was pictured on the front cover of a magazine featuring an article about transgender people.
NEW YORK, MILAN, PARIS?
It spurred her to pursue a career in modeling full-time. She enrolled in classes but initially found work hard to come by.
“I was getting rejected because of my identity and that was extremely disheartening,” said Lama, who has established herself as a successful model in her native Nepal over the past couple of years.
In 2014 she featured in a documentary titled Anjali: Living Inside Someone Else’s Skin in which she said she hoped to become completely female one day — an operation that is financially out of reach for most Nepalis.
Her recent success has come as Nepal has increased its recognition of transgender people. In 2015 the country, which allows citizens to choose their sex, started issuing third gender category passports for those who identify themselves as transgender.
“With the changing times people have become more accepting,” explained Lama.
Manisha Dhakal, one of the founders of the Blue Diamond Society, said Nepal’s government needed to do more to provide equal opportunities in education and employment for transgender people.
“To get the acceptance in society we need to be economically empowered,” she told AFP.
In neighboring India, “Hijras” have also long complained of discrimination and marginalization. They are recognized as a third gender but are often shunned from society with some forced into begging or prostitution.
Lama — who said it would be a “dream come true” to follow other transgender models onto major catwalks such as New York, Milan and Paris — hopes her turn at Lakme Fashion Week will make a difference in the battle for acceptance.
She added: “I do hope to be an inspiration for other transgender people. I’d like to tell them to always believe in themselves and to work towards their goals.”
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and