On the journalist’s question when she for the first time she understood that she is a girl, Angela Ponce answered with an own question: “And when you for the first time understood that you the boy?“
After the victory in a national beauty contest of Spain Mrs. Ponce will become the first transgender woman who will participate in the competition “Miss Universe”. But it is also designed to challenge traditional concepts of a floor and beauty, in passing destroying what she considers unacceptable barriers in the fashion industry.
“Existence of a vagina does not do the woman by the woman”, she says in an interview. “Even if many people do not want to consider me the woman, I, certainly, am her”.
27-year-old Mrs. Ponce grew up in Pilas, the city in the south of Spain where her father owned bar which is operated now by her elder brother. Pylos was very conservative place, she where “there was nobody as I” says.
Angela was lucky with parents who supported her, protected from unnecessary attention and insults at school, and then allowed to play with dolls instead of soccer.
“Problems for me began only out of my house, at school and on the street”, she tells. “My parents always supported me, but since that moment when I was born, I felt that I will be a public figure and that people will speak anyway about the one someone I am.”
Three years ago, having won a regional beauty contest, she moved to Madrid to continue career in quality of model.
When she was about 16 years old, Mrs. Ponce decided to begin hormonal therapy, and then, eventually, made vaginoplasty: “to get rid of what for me was a burden and a trauma”. But now in the message she says to teenagers that vaginoplasty is a personal choice and that it is not something necessary to be a woman.
“There are women with a penis and men with a vagina because the only thing that it is necessary for this purpose – just to be the woman and to feel like the woman”, – she told.
Her recent success as beauty queen brought her both a great number of admirers, and enemies – generally other women, she continues the story.
“I am struck that the most part of criticism proceeds from women and people from my own collective (other participants of a competition)”, – she told. “It seemed to me strange that some women cannot take out that the fact that I participate in a competition to represent the country as the woman who I actually also am”.
She added: “If we want progress, we need to cease to look whether what is done by other women is good, or not, to cease to judge”.
It is surprising that such progressive event happened in mainly Catholic Spain. On the other hand, this country now quickly develops in questions of gender policy and in a present office of 11 of 17 ministries women head. This indicator the highest among the western countries.
Actually, a considerable part of recent criticism on social networks proceeds from women abroad who consider that Angela will have an unfair advantage before other national beauty queens when she participates in the competition Miss Universe at the end of this year. But Angela claims that besides vaginoplasty, the boob job after hormonal therapy was the only other surgical procedure which she did.
“When I hear that not all girls will compete on an equal footing, I speak and, of course, indeed – I actually had to make twice more efforts to appear here because I not was presented by all the same initially, by nature. I had to try”, she says in response to criticism. “But my person always was my person, whether you like it or not, and the same touches my waist”.
“Women have the right to do with the body that want. Whether it be correction of a nose or cheekbones. And many do it. I increased a breast and made a vagina what from that?”
Mrs. Ponce also complained of hypocrisy of some large brands of clothes which refused her as model when they learned that she the transgender. “There are brands which are glad that you buy and wear their clothes, but do not want you to represent it on a podium. It is strange, there is it in the world of fashion which claims that it establishes new trends of equality”.
Even during stay of Mr. Trump as the head of a competition of the rule were changed to allow transgender women to participate in it. It happened after the successful protest campaign in 2012 of the Canadian beauty queen Jenna Talackova who was initially forbidden to participate in her national competition. Trump had to make concessions.
Guillermo Escobar who is the president of a national beauty contest of Spain, recognized that Mrs. Ponce’s victory as transgender woman helped to lift a competition profile, insisting that “the jury just estimated her as the great woman”.
“She is the pioneer sending the message about equality and respect, and I hope that finally at us will be more than such candidates as she, and it will be not food for bright headings, and a commonplace”, – he added.
During the interview with Mrs. Ponce, her 19-year-old sister, Amanda, attentively looked at her, and then took several pictures close up from the mobile phone. “I can be proud of the sister only, – Amanda who is law student told. “She worked much to appear here, but I know that she and all other women can achieve bigger”.
