The transgender community has had a long and tough fight for equality in India. Even till today, they’re fighting against prejudice, stereotypes and many more social evil thoughts against them and their community, all of it just to make the general public understand that they are just like anyone and that they too deserve their rights and equality.
While there are many who are struggling, in these times then it’s important to look over the inspiring stories of people from the transgender community, who despite many obstacles and hardships rose over it all to taste success and applause.
One such story is that of Aizya Naaz Joshi India’s first transgender international beauty queen.
Naaz Joshi’s Inspiring Story
Aizya Naaz Joshi is said to be India’s first transgender international beauty queen, and the first trans woman to have won the title of Miss Diversity three times in a row from 2017 to 2019.
The Delhi-based transgender female also won the title of Empress Earth 2021-22, an international virtual beauty pageant.
But her life story has been hard and rough to get to the success she has now. Hailing from Delhi to a Muslim mother and a Hindu Punjabi father, Naaz was born as a boy but figured out she was transgender soon.
As per Business Insider India, she said “When I grew up a little,all the relative told my parents to send me to the trans ( hijra) community. But they declined it and wanted me to study.”
In a Deccan Chronicle report she said that school was a difficult part for her because “They used to mock my gait and pass demeaning comments such as, ‘dekh, chakka ja raha hai’. Even my mother would ask me to walk like a guy. But feminine mannerisms came naturally to me. I would cry and ask God why he made me this way.”
However, it seems that her parents didn’t want her to stay with them or for some reason they sent her to stay with an uncle in Mumbai. It was here that she worked at a restaurant washing and cleaning the tables all at the tender age of 11 years old. Tragedy struck her though when she was gang-raped by a male cousin and his friends that left her hospitalised.
She was forbidden from talking about it with anyone by her aunt and uncle, but she not speaks out saying “I was a child, too and had no idea of what rape even meant. All I knew was that I was brutally injured. I understood much later what had happened to me. At the hospital, however, I met a transwoman who asked me whether I wanted to come along for begging on the streets. I refused, and told her if she could get me a good job, I would do it.”
Naaz, in order to fund her education also worked at a dance bar in Mumbai saying “I had to pretend to be a 16 year old girl to get work.”
Read More: Risen From Bullying And Discrimination: India’s First-Ever Transgender Football Team
Naaz worked at the dance bar from 1998 to 2006 until she met Viveka Babajee, the late Mauritian model and her cousin who helped her to look beyond her environment and dream bigger. It was “Thanks to her encouragement, I got into the National Institute of Fashion Technology-Delhi, and she sponsored my education there for three years,” says Naaz.
However, even here life had obstacles for her where despite clearing the entrance exams with flying colours “During the interview itself, I was informed that they did not have a third category. I had to choose between male and female and since I had not yet transitioned, I chose male. I had to wear men’s clothes and hide my identity throughout the course.”
Even after her accomplishments as a fashion student and “Despite working for big labels like Ritu Kumar and Ritu Beri, I found it hard to get a job,” and had to take up a job at a massage parlour in South Delhi to make ends meet. In 2013 she underwent gender reassignment surgery and started to model in earnest.
She then went on to be featured on the cover of Tehelka Magazine and in 2017 won the Miss Diversity title for the first time.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Business Insider, The Indian Express, DNA India
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