Posted on 12/23/2023 4:34:56 AM PST by lowbridge
A transgender model is suing his New York-based modeling agency for discrimination, claiming it killed his career after he transitioned and branded him “insufficiently masculine” to work in men’s fashion.
Frances Coombe, 30, who is a Canadian catwalk model, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, claiming Muse Model Management NYC and its president Conor Kennedy had violated his civil rights protecting gender identity.
Coombe is requesting more than $300,000 in lost income and is seeking damages for emotional distress over the downfall of his reputation and career, the lawsuit said.
“It is no surprise that models evolve their looks, and I had been moving towards more androgyny for quite some time,” he told the Daily Beast in a statement.
The high fashion model said several other models — both male and female — at Muse Model Management had also been moving toward androgynous looks, but did not receive the same pushback.
Coombe, who has walked for the likes of Marc Jacobs and Gucci, said he told his agency that he no longer wanted to model as a female and requested to do male work, but Muse allegedly “refused” and “constructively terminated” his contract, according to the suit.
Around October 2021, Coombe — who identified as non-binary at the time — alleges that Kennedy told him they would still pitch him for women’s jobs as there was no such thing as genderless work in the industry.
“In modeling life, you will be ‘she’ and ‘her’ until you arrive on set, non-binary models are not sought after in the casting process. When you show up for a job you can tell them your pronouns then,” Coombes recalled Kennedy telling him. “We’ll be sending you to women’s wear jobs and you have to separate your private life from your work life.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Were I his boss, I think I’d told him to get real or get lost. If he got away with this, he could maybe switch back & forth a few times...for the money of course. He does sound mentally ill.
“ the mentally ill suing”
It’s easier than working. Evidently, being a “flavor of the month” victim can pay very well. I guess that’s the only agency in the world which might use such a person.
She looks ‘insufficiently masculine’ to me…..
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