Playboy names first transgender Playmate in magazine history
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Playboy announced on Wednesday Ines Rau will be the first openly transgender Playmate to be featured in the upcoming issue of the magazine in its 64-year history.
Rau will grace the issue that will also pay tribute to the late founder Hugh Hefner, who died earlier this month. The Playmate title is given to women who appear in a centerfold pictorial in an issue of the Playboy magazine. The model previously posed for Playboy in a May 2014 issue.
“When I was doing this shoot, I was thinking of all those hard days in my childhood,” she said in an interview released by Playboy.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“And now everything happening gives me so much joy and happiness. I thought, ‘Am I really going to be a Playmate—me?’ It’s the most beautiful compliment I’ve ever received. It’s like getting a giant bouquet of roses,” she added.
Rau also said, “I love to be sexy, but sexy is an attitude. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say it, but I really feel sexy all the time!”
Rau isn’t the first transgender model to be photographed in the magazine. Caroline “Tula” Cossey, who appeared in a “James Bond” movie, became the first transgender woman to pose for the magazine in 1991.