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Tracey Norman

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Tracey Norman
Born
Tracey Gayle Norman

1952 (age 71–72)
United States
OccupationModel
Height1.77 m (5 ft 9+1⁄2 in)[1]

Tracey "Africa" Norman, aka Tracey Africa, is an American fashion model, and the first African-American trans woman model to achieve prominence in the fashion industry.[2][3] Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Norman has modeled and been photographed for such publications as Essence, Vogue Italia and Harper's Bazaar India.[4] Norman also had a magazine cover and life story spread in New York Magazine.

Early Life

Tracey Norman was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1952. Norman identified as a woman from a young age, but didn't have any queer role models to look up to as a child.[5] She was a shy and quiet child, and was the first person in her family to graduate high school.[5] At a very young age, Norman experience sexual molestation by one of her older neighbors.[5] In middle school, she and her family survived the Newark Riots, and she attended Clinton Place Junior High. Her mother and father were both professional bowlers, and her parents met a bowling alley.[5] They would take her and her sister bowling when they were children. Her parents worked a variety of jobs when Norman was growing up. In the summer, she would visit her family in North Carolina. In high school, she attended North Tech, and learned how to work on cars, but this was a segregated learning experience.[5] On the day of her high school graduation, she came out to mother as a woman, and her mother was very supportive, showing her "unconditional love."[5]

Career

Beginnings

In the early 1970's, two years after graduating high school, Norman ran into an old friend who suggested that she become a model, and she started modeling in the local Newark area.[5] In 1975, Norman was discovered after sneaking into a photo shoot with fashion photographer Irving Penn, who photographed her for Italian Vogue.[2] Her first job was very prestigious, as she worked with Italian Vogue, earning 1,500 dollars a day. She quickly became a very popular model, and had jobs all over the country. She moved to New York to continue her career, and two years later, she appeared on the box of Clairol’s "Born Beautiful" hair color No. 512, Dark Auburn.[2] She is transgender but kept that under wraps, and landed an exclusive contract with Avon, for a skin care line.[2] In 1980, while on a photo-shoot with Essence magazine, the assistant to her hairdresser, André Douglas, found out about her birth gender and told the editor, Susan Taylor, who was also on the set. Due to the outrage and because it was not socially acceptable, her photos were not published and no company would work with her any longer. Her career instantly ended, and she struggled to find work.[5] She moved back to her mother's house in Newark.

At this time, she decided to move to Paris with two friends who were also models. There she was able to sign a 6-month contract with Balenciaga. Once that contract ended, Norman found a lack of work in Milan and moved back to New York where she signed with Grace del Marco Agency. This agency didn't give her much work and Norman had accepted that her modeling career was basically over. She ended up taking a job at Show Center, where she performed in a burlesque peep show for trans women. Ever since she has been active in the drag ball community and inducted into the ballroom hall of fame in 2001.[6] She worked with the Ballroom house "House of Africa" and this is where she gained her middle name "Africa," working in New York and Brooklyn under this name.[5]

Career revitalization

After a biographical piece was written about Norman in December 2015 by New York Magazine's digital fashion site "The Cut", Clairol reached out to Norman and in 2016 announced that Norman would become the face of their 'Nice 'n Easy Color As Real As You Are' campaign. Clairol global associate brand director Heather Carruthers stated that the company was "honored to bring back Tracey Norman as a woman who no longer has to hide her truth." The campaign focused on the "confidence that comes from embracing what makes you unique and using natural color to express yourself freely."[7] In 2016 Norman and Geena Rocero became the first two openly transgender models to appear on the cover of an edition of Harper’s Bazaar.[8] Norman also did a commercial for Lexus. In 2016, Norman was interviewed by the Queer Newark Oral History Project.[5]

Personal life

Norman says the feeling of being different goes back as far as she can remember. In a cover story for New York Magazine she said "it just seemed like I was living in the wrong body. I always felt female."[9]

“I’ve always identified as being a woman. It was New York mag and the London Times and Marie Claire that put the word trans and attached it to my name. I understood the publicity for it and the interest that it drummed up, but I made that very clear in every interview that I never identified as trans. I don't have a problem with people using it. I'm just saying that personally, I've never identified with the word trans or being trans. I guess, because of the time difference. And I didn't grow up around gay people. I only had women around me. I watched how they talked, conversed with each other, how they walked, how they sat. I was just enthralled with the femininity of a woman and that's what I wanted to be."[10]

For Norman her life at home as well as school was not easy. She had a father who was battling cancer and a family to whom she was afraid to come out. Although she was nervous to tell her family, she was relieved when her mother extended her arms for a big hug—she felt safe and at home.[2] Her mother admitted that she had always known.[9]

After coming out to her family, she wanted to start to transition but that wasn't an easy process.[9] She ran into an old classmate who had gone through the same transition.[9] This is when she learned that she could take birth control pills, without the placebo, to become the woman she always was.[9] A little after, she started going to trans clubs and this is where she found a doctor who did under-the-table hormone shots.[9] These shots are what gave her a feminine body, her breasts grew and she started to lose weight.[9] Realizing her feminine identity took slightly longer than it did to come out. It took her a few months after graduation to finally find herself wandering into S. Klein, a department store in Newark where she grew up, and buying her first dress. It wasn't until a full year after her graduation that she felt like she could pass as a woman in broad daylight in public.[9]

After transitioning, she began to attend local Newark bars and clubs with her friends, such as Le Joc and Murphy's.[5] Le Joc was very popular among models, and Norman met many famous models there including Man.

In a 2021 interview with the LGBTQ&A podcast, Norman said that she does not identify as a transgender woman, but rather just a woman.[10] It is the media that has put the term "transgender" as her identity.

Further reading

  • A storyline in the show Pose was inspired by an instance of rejection that Tracey Norman experienced by Playboy and The Oprah Winfrey Show.[11]
  • Laverne Cox paid tribute to Tracey Africa as well as other Black women, such as Tina Turner and Beyoncé, in the October 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.[12]
  • Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)
  • Carol Jenkins sat down with Tracey Norman for Black America in 2016 to discuss her early career as well as its resurgence.[13]

References

  1. ^ Pavia, Will (March 12, 2016). "The model who tricked the fashion industry". The Times. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d e Yuan, Jada; Wong, Aaron (December 14, 2015). "The First Black Trans Model Had Her Face on a Box of Clairol". The Cut. New York.
  3. ^ "Strut Premier Party: 5 Things We Learned". theFashionSpot. 2016-09-13. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
  4. ^ Yuan, Jada (27 December 2015). "Susan Taylor Says She Wouldn't Have Outed Tracey Africa". The Cut. Retrieved 2016-03-11.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Tracey Africa Norman Interview" (PDF). Queer Newark Oral History Project. Queer Newark Oral History Project. Retrieved 2 December 2023.
  6. ^ "The First Black Trans Model Had Her Face on a Box of Clairol". The Cut. 2015-12-15. Retrieved 2021-01-26.
  7. ^ Julia Malacoff (August 17, 2016). "First Black Transgender Model Tracey Norman Lands Major Modeling Contract". shape.com. Archived from the original on August 19, 2016. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
  8. ^ "Tracey Africa and Geena Rocero Cover Harper's Bazaar". Nymag.com. 2016-09-15. Retrieved 2016-09-21.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h "The First Black Trans Model Had Her Face on a Box of Clairol". 15 December 2015.
  10. ^ a b "Tracey 'Africa' Norman Looks Back on Her Legendary Modeling Career". www.advocate.com. 2021-02-02. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
  11. ^ "Tracey Africa, Model 'Pose's Angel Is Based On, Rejected by 'Playboy'". www.out.com. 2019-09-14. Retrieved 2021-09-10.
  12. ^ Mosely, Rachel (2016-09-06). "See Laverne Cox Pay Tribute to 3 Icons". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved 2021-09-10.
  13. ^ The First Transgendered Model with Tracey Norman | Black America, retrieved 2021-09-10
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