History made! For the first time ever, Vogue Paris put a transgender model, Brazilian beauty Valentina Sampaio, on its cover.
The French fashion bible chose Sampaio to cover its March 2017 issue — the second-biggest cover of the year for any fashion magazine, which makes a huge statement. The tagline reads, "La beauté transgenre: Comment ells bouleversent le monde," which translates to, "Transgender beauty: How they're turning the world upside down."
Meanwhile, Sampaio, who shares a strong resemblance to Brooke Shields with her bold brows and full pout, stuns while clad in a plunging gold lamé dress, teamed with one long tassel earring and Farrah Fawcett–style feather waves.
The model, who rose to fame as an ambassador for L'Oréal Paris and appeared on the cover of Elle Brazil last fall, celebrated by sharing the cover shot with her nearly 35,000 followers via Instagram with the caption, "❤So proud and Super happyyy❤ merciiiii❤😁😍😍😍😍😘😘✨ Ameiii super felizzz😍😁❤ #vsstorm ⚡🎉."
And the magazine is just as happy to have her. "She is the absolute equal of Gisele, Daria, Edie or Anna," Vogue Paris editor in chief Emmanuelle Alt shared via the magazine's site. "In a postgendered world, which more and more designers are highlighting on their runways, Trans people — the ultimate symbols of a rejection of conformity — are icons that Vogue supports and chooses to celebrate."
Sampaio's cover stands in strong contrast to American Vogue's latest, which claimed to be a "diverse" representation of shifting beauty and body-image standards. While the intention may have been positive, many social-media commenters cried out that Vogue had forced Ashley Graham, the only plus-size model to be featured, to cover her thigh (a claim she refutes). They also noted that the models — among them, Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid — weren't as diverse as advertised: None of the ladies' skin tones were particularly dark and with the exception of Graham, all were tall and thin.
