LGBT Hollywood

LGBT Hollywood

3 days ago

Caroline 'Tula' Cossey didn’t just break the mold—she smashed it. Tula became the world’s first openly transgender model to pose for Playboy in 1991, leaving a legacy that still echoes today.

Assigned male at birth, she transitioned in her late teens, turning heads with her stunning 6-foot frame and undeniable allure. By the late ’70s, she was a star—landing spreads in Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. Then came her big break: a role as a Bond girl in 1981’s ‘For Your Eyes Only’.

But when the tabloids outed her as trans with the screaming headline: 'James Bond Girl Was a Boy,' the world lost its mind—not because she was trans, but because no one could believe this bombshell had ever been anything but a woman.

The disbelief was deafening.

Tula’s beauty was so striking that even the haters tripped over themselves trying to process it. One transphobic pundit, a tabloid columnist, fumed in 1981, “This is a man pretending to be a woman, it’s a disgrace to decency!” Only to have readers fire back, “If that’s a man, then I’ve been wrong about women my whole life!”

The clowns didn’t just miss the mark—they embarrassed themselves on a global stage, proving Tula’s power went beyond the camera.

After the outing, Tula didn’t back down. She wrote multiple books including, “My Story”, a wildly popular memoir about reclaiming her narrative. Her career soared again with the iconic 1991 Playboy shoot. It was Playboy’s most mailed-about feature ever—showing the world what resilience looks like.

The transphobes kept swinging and missing.

One bitter critic raged on a ’90s talk show, “She’s a freak of science, not a lady!” only for Tula to quip back, “Science made me fabulous—sorry you missed the upgrade.” The crowd roared, and the haters shrank.

Cossey, now 70, has largely stepped away from the public eye since her trailblazing days as a model and advocate. She’s living a quieter life in Atlanta, with her husband of 33 years, David Finch.

Her voice turned disbelief into a weapon, showing that trans women could be icons, not outliers.

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