Her own relationship with fashion has always been complex. At age 13, she had already almost reached her full height (6 ft. 2 in.) and began swimming competitively in her home country of France.
“It really was just something that I happened to be good at,” Legler says. “My fantasy was always to be able to sit by the pool deck, preferably in a pink tutu, reading a book.”
When she qualified for the Olympic Games in Atlanta at age 18, Legler got together with some of her male teammates and shaved her head, eager to experience the feeling they described of swimming with a bald head.
“That was the beginning,” Legler says. “It was always one of those things: ‘These people get to do it, I really want to do it — why can’t I?’” Read more here.
The Ford Agency recently signed Casey Legler, a self-admitted woman, as a full-time male model. What I appreciate most about Legler is words like gender identity and gender orientation become about freedom.
Which is what I think this whole gender changing thing is about, at least for me. The freedom to live how I want, in the body I want. In the context of freedom, the whole experience is quite fantastic.