Adelaide teenager Gemma Cowling becomes a transgender trailblazer

SHE started life as a boy, but Adelaide teenager Gemma Cowling believes she was born to be a woman and is now making history as the first Australian-born transgender model.

Gemma Cowling is the first Australian-born transgender model to be signed by international agency Azalea. Picutre: MIKE BURTON

SHE started life as a boy, but Adelaide teenager Gemma Cowling believes she was born to be a woman and is now making history as the first Australian-born transgender model.

“Whether I necessarily knew it or not I always have been Gemma,” the 19-year-old said in an exclusive interview with The Advertiser.

“From really early childhood it was obvious to me that there was something different and I wasn’t necessarily fitting in the way I was supposed to and relating to the world the way I was expected to, but it took me quite a long time to answer all of those questions and say ‘Oh, that’s what’s going on here’.”

Gemma, who identifies as a girl, was recently signed to Adelaide agency Azalea Models after being scouted by director Stacey Hendrickson who says she has international potential.

“I see her modelling in London, Paris, wherever she wants to go,” Ms Hendrickson said, adding while some agencies had transgender sections that practice was “backwards”.

“We’ve got her in the women’s section because she’s a woman.”

Gemma began transitioning from male to female in November after completing her secondary education.

“Before that I was just a pretty regular person and I still am in my opinion,” she said.

“I grew up with my mum and my sister in Adelaide ... I’d been holding out to come out and live full time, as it’s known, until after year 12.”

Gemma, who declined to reveal her former identity, was inspired by her idol Australian supermodel Gemma Ward when choosing her new name.

She began taking hormones on Christmas Day to get “my physical body to match the way it is in my brain”.

Since then Gemma has noticed differences, which she describes as “a crazy, surprising and awesome ride”, but says in other ways “very little has changed”.

“For a lot of people it’s not really been a huge change because I like to think of myself, and I think a lot of other people do also, as just the same person,” she said.

A self-confessed “massive fashion nerd” since the age of six, Gemma plans to become a fashion designer, but also wants to see where modelling takes her after making her catwalk debut in couture by Adelaide designer Jaimie Sortino at a Mother’s Day charity event.

“I want to be a model, who also just happens to be transgender,” she said.

That said, Gemma is aware she is a role model as the first Australian-born transgender model, Australian transgender supermodel Andreja Pejic being born in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“I am by far not the first trans model — there are quite a lot, which I think is amazing because it’s just another case of proving transgender people just live their lives and do what everyone else does,” Gemma said.

“I’m not going to lie ... it’s cool (to be the first Australian-born) ... but I’m just happy to be who I am and be doing what I’m doing.”