Trans Masc, Non-Binary & Gender Expansive People of Color Making History in Fashion & Entertainment

Laith Ashley

Laith Ashley grew up in Harlem in a Dominican-American household and came out as a trans man at 24. Before modeling, he worked as a counselor for homeless LGBTQ+ youth at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City — a part of his story he hasn't left behind.

His fashion career launched in 2015 when a photo shoot he posted on Instagram went viral, catching the attention of Laverne Cox, who reposted it and helped amplify his platform. Since then he's become one of the most recognizable trans men in fashion: first trans man in a global Diesel campaign, covers of British GQ and Vogue France, Barneys New York, Calvin Klein, and more. In 2018, he became the first transgender Pit Crew member on RuPaul's Drag Race.

In January 2023, he starred as Taylor Swift's love interest in the "Lavender Haze" music video — one of the most-watched music video releases of the year, bringing his visibility to a massive new audience. Beyond modeling, he's a singer-songwriter and a consistent voice for trans men in spaces that have historically shut them out.

"I'm trans, but it's not all I am. I want to show everyone that yes I am trans — but the same goes for all trans people. Everyone's transition is their own."

Devin-Norelle

Devin-Norelle uses ze/zim pronouns and has built a career at the intersection of fashion, media, and advocacy. As a model, ze has walked New York Fashion Week for Chromat and Stuzo, modeled for Bonobos' 2019 Pride Campaign, and appeared on covers and in editorial features for Teen Vogue, them., Allure, and Out magazine.

As a writer and contributing editor, Devin-Norelle has used zis platform to call for more diverse and authentic trans and non-binary visibility in media — not just token appearances, but substantive representation that reflects the full range of trans and non-binary experience. Ze is also the creator of the original "Trans is Beautiful" tee, which has become a widely recognized symbol of trans pride.

Devin-Norelle's work sits at the intersection of fashion visibility and cultural advocacy — a reminder that presence on a runway or a magazine cover is most powerful when it's backed by a real voice.

Aaron Rose Philip

Aaron Rose Philip made history in 2018 as the first Black, transgender, and physically disabled model signed to a major modeling agency. Born in Antigua and raised in the Bronx, Philip has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair — and has used her platform not just to represent her own intersecting identities, but to push the fashion industry to reckon with its exclusion of disabled models at every level.

In 2021, she became the first model using a wheelchair to walk for a major luxury fashion brand when she debuted as an exclusive for Moschino's Spring/Summer 2022 show. She's since appeared on the covers of British Vogue, Paper Magazine, W Magazine, and Perfect. In October 2025, she was featured on the cover of Vogue Netherlands alongside photographer Richie Shazam. That same year she launched an NTS Radio guest artist residency and began self-releasing original music.

Philip is also a published author — her memoir This Kid Can Fly (HarperCollins, 2016), written when she was 14, documents her childhood with cerebral palsy. She has given a TED Talk on systemic inequity in fashion and received a 2024 Cosmopolitan Club Cosmo Trailblazer Award presented by Pose icon Dominique Jackson.

"I'm not doing this for me. Whether disabled or Black and trans, I'm doing it for my whole community."

Chella Man

Chella Man holds more intersecting identities than most industries know how to handle — and has spent their career making space for all of them simultaneously. They are Chinese-Jewish, trans, non-binary, Deaf, and pansexual, and have been vocal about the fact that real representation means all of these identities, not a curated selection of them.

Man gained wide visibility in 2017 when they began documenting their transition on YouTube, amassing a dedicated following. In 2019, they were cast as Jericho in DC's Titans — making them the first trans masc actor in a DC superhero series and the first Deaf actor in that franchise. That same year, they were signed to IMG Models. In 2021, they published their book Continuum (Penguin Random House), part of the Pocket Change Collective series, exploring identity, transition, and disability. In October 2021, they became one of the first out trans masc non-binary faces for a major beauty brand when YSL tapped them for their Nu Collection campaign.

More recently, Man's work has turned toward fine art. Their 2024 solo exhibition "It Doesn't Have to Make Sense" at Hannah Traore Gallery in New York explored their body as a canvas — tattoos, surgeries, and cochlear implants as acts of reclamation. A live performance piece called "Autonomy" followed at the Jewish Museum. In March 2026, they competed in the Ironman 70.3 relay in Oceanside, California, placing third out of 200 teams.

"There is an extreme lack of representation for young, Deaf, queer, Jewish, Asian, transgender artists. So I decided to be my own representation."

Dua Saleh

Dua Saleh was born in Kassala, Sudan, and came to the United States as a child refugee during the Second Sudanese Civil War, eventually settling in Saint Paul, Minnesota. They began writing poetry at four years old. Their path from open mic stages in the Twin Cities to a Netflix series and a debut album is one of the most singular origin stories in music right now.

Saleh's music — genre-defying, drawing on rap, R&B, jazz, and experimental pop — arrived with their 2019 debut EP Nūr, followed by Rosetta (2020), named after Black queer rock pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Their first full-length studio album arrived in 2024. Throughout, their music has engaged directly with Blackness, queerness, Muslim identity, and community resistance — including "body cast," a track about police brutality whose proceeds went to Black Visions Collective following George Floyd's murder in their hometown of Minneapolis.

In 2021, Saleh was cast as Cal in Netflix's Sex Education — a non-binary student navigating a school environment hostile to their existence. They returned for season 4 in 2023. The role brought Saleh's music to a much wider audience and gave a generation of non-binary young people one of the first characters on mainstream TV who reflected their experience. Saleh has also appeared in HBO Max's Generation and BBC's Industry.

Before any of this, Saleh organized — participating in the NAACP's youth branch, Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, and the Pan Afrikan Student Union. Community is where they started and it remains where they operate from.

Ian Alexander

Ian Alexander has been making history quietly and consistently for several years. Born in Salt Lake City to a Filipino-American family, they came out as trans as a teenager and began acting in their early twenties.

Their breakthrough role was Buck in Netflix's critically acclaimed series The OA (2016–2019) — a trans boy whose storyline handled gender identity with unusual care and nuance for the time. From there, Alexander was cast as Gray Tal in Paramount+'s Star Trek: Discovery, becoming the first openly trans actor to play a trans character in the Star Trek universe — a franchise with a decades-long history of progressive representation. They appeared across multiple seasons of the show.

Their voice work includes Lev in the critically acclaimed video game The Last of Us Part II (2020) — a trans boy whose storyline became one of the most talked-about in games that year — and a voice role in Disney Channel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Alexander has spoken openly about the visibility that comes with their roles and the responsibility they feel toward trans youth who see themselves reflected in their characters.

Ser Anzoategui

Ser Anzoategui is a Chicano, non-binary actor, comedian, and writer whose work sits at the intersection of queer Latinx storytelling and political comedy. They are best known for playing Eddy Martinez in Starz's critically acclaimed series Vida — a queer Chicana bar owner navigating grief, gentrification, and complicated family dynamics in East LA. The role earned them two Imagen Award Foundation nominations, one of the most significant recognitions in Latinx entertainment.

Beyond acting, Ser is a working stand-up comedian who has performed at The Comedy Store, Flappers, and The Ice House in Pasadena, and is a creator and writer as well as a solo show performer — their critically acclaimed show ¡Ser! won two LA Weekly awards. Their 2025 film The Low End Theory won Best Ensemble at the NVISION Latino Film & Music Festival.

Ser has also been a vocal advocate for non-binary inclusion in award categories, writing an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times and a guest column for Deadline pushing for awards shows to recognize non-binary performers in a dedicated category rather than forcing them to choose between gendered nominees.

Marquise Vilsón

Marquise Vilsón grew up in the Bronx during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis and the crack epidemic, and he found community — and eventually a way to be seen — through New York's underground ballroom scene. He began walking balls in 1995, joined the House of Balenciaga, and spent the next two-plus decades as a respected elder, mentor, and leader in ballroom culture while simultaneously doing HIV education and sexual health organizing in the community.

His acting career began in his mid-thirties when he was cast in the off-Broadway production of Charm (2017). Since then he's built a steady and meaningful résumé: Law & Order: SVU (a GLAAD Award-nominated episode about trans military service members), Ben Is Back alongside Julia Roberts, A League of Their Own (Amazon, 2022), Tom Swift (CW, 2022 — a series regular role as Isaac Vega, a trans pansexual bodyguard), The Lost Holiday (2024), and the 2024 Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival. He also appeared in the landmark documentary No Ordinary Man (2020) about trans jazz musician Billy Tipton, and was featured in Netflix's Disclosure (2020), executive produced by Laverne Cox.

Vilsón was first documented on camera in Daniel Peddle's 2005 documentary The Aggressives, which followed six young Black and Brown masculine-presenting people in New York City — one of the earliest records of Black trans masculinity in documentary film. More than twenty years later, he remains one of the most consistent and authentic representatives of Black trans masculine experience in media.

He has received the Eric Christian Bazaar Award, the Octavia St. Laurent Trans Activist Award, the Masquerade Blue Print Award, was named a Transman ICON (2018), and was inducted into the Dorian Corey Hall of Fame (2020).