The latest issue of Playboy features a transgender playmate, a first in the magazine’s 64-year history.
Ines Rau poses fully nude in the November/December 2017 issue, which is also the first to hit newsstands following the death of the magazine’s founder, Hugh Hefner.
The 26-year-old model has been shot for the magazine before, however, this time around marks her debut as the first official transgender playmate, which means she will appear in a full pictorial and the iconic centrefold.
Rau hails from Paris and is a successful fashion model, fronting campaigns for Balmain, appearing in Vogue Italia and commanding the catwalk at fashion weeks across the globe.
She appeared in Playboy’s May 2014 issue in a special A-Z edition, which championed a more progressive understanding of gender as non-binary.
The French beauty signed with a model agency shortly after.
Rau didn’t identify as transgender for a long time, she told Playboy, confessing that she was afraid of never finding a partner or being perceived as “weird.”
“Then I was like, you know, you should just be who you are,” she said.
She currently lives between Paris and New York, but has her sights set on moving to Los Angeles.
The feature has been met with mixed reviews online.
“When I open a Playboy, I expect to see women, not some guy who identifies as a woman, or some former male who has had the surgery to become female,” wrote one commenter on the magazine's Facebook page.
“I just don't want my kids confused,” added another.
“I know it's by choice, but it's also a parent's responsibility to guide and teach their kids at an early age. But if they claim they were born like that... then, I don't buy it!! Males have male parts and females have female parts! Sorry!”
Though Rau is the first official transgender playmate, she is not the first transgender model to appear in the magazine.
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Can't find any nudes yet. Will update when I do.
