Over 100 trans men, women who identify as men, have entered the Miss Italy pageant in protest against the competition banning trans women from entry.
Earlier this month, Miss Netherlands awarded the title to Rikki Valerie Kollé, a transgender, which then prompted the Miss Italy official organizer, Patrizia Mirigliani, to say that transgenders would not be allowed to compete in that country’s competition.
“Lately, beauty contests have been trying to make the news using strategies that I think are a bit absurd,” Mirigliani told an Italian radio station.
Mirigliani emphasized that such beauty pageants have been exclusively female in the past. “Probably because, even then, it was foreseen that beauty could undergo modifications, or that women could undergo modifications, or that men could become women,” she said.
In response, transgender activist Federico Barbarossa, a woman who identifies as a man and who lives in the southern Italian town of Bari, told NBC News that she felt “kind of amused by it, because I was like, ‘Yeah, well, I was assigned female at birth, but they would reject me because I look like a boy, and they would consider me as a boy.’”
Barbarossa then applied to the pageant using her female birth name to protest in solidarity with the trans women that would be denied entry. Per NBC News:
Barbarossa shared a screenshot of an email he received confirming his registration on Instagram, and then the local LGBTQ nonprofit group he works with, Mixed LGBTQIA+, shared his entry on Facebook with a statement encouraging other trans men to do the same.
The campaign went viral online, Barbarossa said, and he estimates that more than 100 trans men have entered the pageant so far. He said some told him they have even been called to selections, which is the next step in the process to find contestants across the country.
Barbarossa revelled at the fact that Miss Italy organizers “really have to go through every single application,” hoping that the protest will “maybe lead them to think better next time.”
“I like to think I’m a little part of Italy’s progress in this sense,” Barbarossa said.
“They would never think that a trans person might even aspire to win a beauty pageant, because we’re seen as this kind of, like, three-headed monster, and I think a part of it is that so many people have never seen trans women or trans men or trans people in general,” Barbarossa added.
Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.