My dad was a theater actor, so he had an agent, and he brought me into his agency when I was maybe four years old. That was how I started. I started modeling, and it progressed from there.
I was modeling with an agency in New York and a manager with the agency introduced himself to me one day and he said he had auditions for someone my age. He asked if I would be interested in doing some.
I was into theatre in school and college with theatre personality Barry John, who has also trained Shah Rukh Khan. Then I joined the Elite modeling agency - they have different courses including grooming, modeling and theatre workshop. I was selected for modeling.
At 16 years old, I was signed to my very first modeling agency. That was my first real introduction to the entertainment industry. It really opened my eyes to a world that was available to me.
I had no idea what modeling entailed and what an agency was. It was crazy. As I continued to do it, it was fun for me to learn everything from A to Z.
I grew up as an only child of two parents who had dropped out of high school. They had enormous respect for education and encouraged me as a child when I had strong interests in both math and science, but we really didn't have much by way of educational role modeling in our family.
I met an agent through my modeling agency who encouraged me to go out and audition for sitcoms, and I was absolutely petrified because I had no desire to do it.
I have a production company, and we work with reality TV producers 44 Blue. They asked if we'd like to get involved. When they explained that it was the first transgender modeling agency, we said, "Yeah, of course!"
I had already been approached to do modeling, but in the beginning, I didn't want to hear of it. Then, after two months of delivering pizza, I changed my mind, and I presented myself at the agency.
Modeling is also the first job I've ever had where it's my job to love myself. While many people think that modeling would chip away at your self-esteem, it's actually bolstered mine tenfold.
If you die without agency as a child, but you have agency in your body [in the novel], how is it to be enacted unless it is being reimagined by a writer?
I started modeling before '1992,' and I had already done Calvin Klein and Target and Gap and Diesel, Reebok, so I had been modeling for a little bit.
By four years of age, the average child in a family receiving public assistance has heard about 13 million words, compared to 45 million for a child from a wealthier family. The disadvantages developed during their first four years are usually still present in high school.
The male or female that the child has the most exposure to in the first four to six years of its life is the primary imprinter of the child.
I always had career goals. And I figured out a path I wanted to take to accomplish those goals. If that meant calling the best modeling agency in the world, that's what it meant.
Starting at age four, my mom decided that she was not going to have an idle child in the house. So I started taking dance lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then I was in acting classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and I was also modeling on Saturdays. And that was my childhood.