Rain Dove wants to be boring.
They grew up in rural Vermont where they had a wild stint pretending to be a male firefighter. Rain took up modeling after losing a bet to a friend. That bet, turns out, landed them on front pages around the world for being a model actively redefining gender in a field notoriously in love with drawing lines between men and women.
Rain’s real dream is seeing the time when not fitting neatly into one gender expression is no longer a big deal. By the way, they like to be called by any pronoun, so we’re going with they/them.
“I would like people like me, in the future, to not be shocking. I want to be good at what I do, but I just want people to look and think, OK. When a man wears a dress it shouldn’t be shocking; you shouldn’t look twice unless you’re thinking, Nice dress!” Rain told Buzzfeed.
They’re walking the walk too (pun completely intended), repping brands like TomboyX and Dove – ones that have committed to highlighting diversity.
When Rain’s not on camera, they organize protests against the HB2 bathroom bill, volunteers, and calls out those that need calling out in the fashion world. They’re currently working with The Nylon Project, an organization that uses the fashion world to help the homeless.
On Instagram, they announced they were boycotting NY Fashion Week, and that “No one — not an ad agency, a celebrity, or even the president should be the one we look to for how we should be our best self. You know YOU. Don’t dress as a ‘gender’ or ‘sex’ — dress as the most effective and comfortable version of yourself because when you are the best you you are able to give your best to the world so we can give our best too.”
Earlier this year Rain gave a brilliant Ted talk on gender capitalism – the concept that society favors and gives more opportunities certain to groups of people based on their gender. Rain hopes to embody the rebellion of gender capitalism. Check it out.
Ready for more? Here’s badass human who doesn’t fit in the gender binary, Cyan Banister.
