![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i.mdel.net\/oftheminute\/images\/2019\/03\/20190214_ID_Mag_06_0168_04.jpg\")
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Photo Collier Schorr courtesy Society Management<\/p>\n
In less than three months, 2019 has already been a banner year for transgender male models, with Finn Buchanan<\/a> becoming the first openly transgender man to walk for Hedi Slimane\u2019s re-envisioned Celine and Krow Kian<\/a> notching firsts on the cover of L\u2019Uomo Vogue and closing Louis Vuitton\u2019s women\u2019s show last week. This morning, CNN<\/a> broke the news that Nathan Westling<\/a>, a longtime staple of our Top 50 Models rankings<\/a> list formerly as Natalie with an instantly identifiable mane of bright red waves, has come out as transgender and is transitioning with plans to return to modeling soon. \u201cI hit a point where I was tired of just existing, because that was kind of my whole life and how I lived,\u201d Westling said. \u201cI always questioned how people just lived life, and just woke up and felt good and could just do things. And I couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n After his many successes in the industry, including campaigns for Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Saint Laurent, Valentino, Prada, Dior, and Louis Vuitton and covers of Dazed, Another, Document, The Last Magazine, and T Magazine, Westling made the decision early last year to step away and focus on himself, having spent over ten years fighting depression. He started taking testosterone and plans to have his chest reconstructed before returning to New York after a few months living in Los Angeles and rejoining the modeling world, which he says was important in helping him understand himself. \u201cWorking as a model, you know, a lot of people ask, ‘Did that screw with you? Did that hurt you?'” he explained. “(Modeling) was cool to me because I’ve always been playing a character, a persona, my whole life. So to be able to be put in all this different hair and makeup, I was able to discover myself as well, and see myself as so many different things; to really know that this is who I should be and the path I should take.”<\/p>\n Westling told CNN that he has been talking with past clients, who have been extremely welcoming, and he expects to come back to an industry that has made vast improvements in diversity and representation over the past few years and one that is ready to embrace him for who he truly is. \u201cIt feels like I’ve been wearing like a mask my whole life,” he said. “Once I removed that mask, it was like I was finally… I don’t know. I’m not wearing a skin that I don’t feel I am anymore. I’m not playing a persona; I’m not trying to be something I’m not anymore. I don’t feel like I’m stuck in this weird moment of having to be in-between.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a number of notable successes and a long run on our Top 50 as Natalie, Nathan Westling comes out in a banner year for transgender representation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":446,"featured_media":119540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10414,2],"tags":[9405,12044,12045],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/446"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119539"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119549,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119539\/revisions\/119549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}