Glamorous star Miss Benny is ready to be open about her gender identity.
In a touching essay, Miss Benny just revealed that she is transgender — and has been privately transitioning for quite some time.
Although she's ready to share her true self, she admits sharing her transgender identity can still be "daunting" considering she "grew up in a religious Texas household where queerness was totally not the vibe."
"By 8 years old, I was praying every night to wake up and somehow be like my sisters. In the morning, I would wake up in the same body, and cry," she shared.
Over time, she realized how truly "unwelcome LGBT topics" were in her hometown and looked for an escape — landing in Hollywood at just 14.
But as she pursued an acting career, she says she "endured years of rejection" in roles she was told weren't meant for her, and she eventually "learned to quiet the colorful parts" of herself.
Everything changed when she got an audition for Glamorous, though, as the show looked to cast "a gender-nonconforming queer Latino makeup fanatic."
At her audition, Miss Benny says she was met with "encouragement to be myself and let my full femininity shine."
"They told me in the room that the role of Marco was mine, and I fell to my knees with tears in my eyes. This was the first time in my life somebody looked at me and said, 'Yes, it’s time for you,'" she shared.
But in the years between when she was cast and the show actually finding a home at Netflix, Miss Benny says her "gender dysphoria was getting brutal" and she "couldn’t run from myself anymore."
"So, as time went by, I privately transitioned in my day-to-day life," she shared. "It felt as if I had lived with a stuffy nose my whole life and then suddenly my breathing airways opened, and I discovered everybody else has been breathing freely the whole time."
But when she learned the show had been picked up by Netflix, she faced a new dilemma — she had been hired to play a boy, and that was no longer her.
After spending a month trying to figure out what to do, she met up with the creator of the show, Jordon Nardino, and presented the idea of having her character transition alongside her transition in real life.
Jordon was incredibly supportive — and when they brought the pitch to Netflix, they were on board, too.
"And so, from that moment on, I worked closely with Jordon to ensure the authenticity of Marco’s identity in the show. And it does feel authentic," she wrote.
She continued, "We get to watch a young queer person experiencing first love and heartbreak, career success and failure, and everything else that comes with being a young adult…while also discovering their identity in the background of life. Because being transgender is not something you do, it’s who you are."
While transitioning in the public eye, both on and off screen, can feel very "vulnerable," she hopes that she can help kids who were once in her shoes.
"I am reminded that this fear is exactly why I wanted to include my transition in the show: Because I know that when I was a terrified queer kid in Texas, it was the queer joy I found in droplets online that guided me to my happiness," she shared.
She added, "And if someone like me is out there feeling the weight of being othered, I want them to have a place they can see someone like us thrive and be celebrated."
You can read all that Miss Benny had to say here.
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