你了解跨性别者吗？

Westling skates the bike behind his apartment.

Westling 在公寓后的自行车道上滑滑板。

Until recently, it seemed like you couldn't open a major fashion magazine without seeing Westling's dark eyes staring out at you from behind his signature cascading curls. Since making his high fashion debut on the Marc Jacobs runway in 2013, when he was still going by the name Natalie, Westling had ascended to the upper ranks of the industry, fronting ad campaigns for the likes of Louis Vuitton, Versace, Prada, Chanel, Dior and Alexander McQueen, and appearing in Vogue's American, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French and Russian editions.

直到最近，似乎你每打开一本知名时尚杂志，都还会看到westling的黑眼睛从他标志性的瀑布般卷发后盯着你。自2013年在Marc Jacobs时尚周首次登台亮相后——当时的他还在使用Natalie这个名字——他迅速成为行业顶尖的模特，为Louis Vuitton, Versace, Prada, Chanel, Dior和Alexander McQueen等时尚品牌拍摄广告大片，并出现在《Vogue》的美国、中国、日本、意大利、法国和俄国版。

But by last April, his priorities had shifted from his career to himself. After a decade spent receiving therapy and medication for depression, anxiety and anger issues, he finally decided to address what he'd always known to be the underlying problem. To do so, he decamped from his base in New York to Los Angeles to begin transitioning from life as Natalie to life as Nathan.

但是到了去年四月份，他的生活重心从事业转到了他自己。在因抑郁、焦虑和易怒问题接受了十年的心理治疗和药物治疗之后，他终于决定解决他一直知道的潜在问题。为此，他毅然离开常居地纽约，搬到洛杉矶开始他从“Natalie”转变为“Nathan”的生活。

"I hit a point where I was tired of just existing, because that was kind of my whole life and how I lived. I always questioned how people just lived life, and just woke up and felt good and could just do things. And I couldn't," Westling says on the phone from his apartment in LA.

“我已经到了一个如行尸走肉般活着的地步了，因为我曾经就那么生活。我一直很疑惑别人是怎么生活的，为什么他们能一起床就感觉很良好、可以正常地做事，而我就是不能。”Westling在他洛杉矶的公寓里接受电话采访时说到。

"It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows in the beginning. My first two months of the transition were tough, and it wasn't until I started to see physical changes that aligned with ... my mental state that I finally woke up and (started) living. I'm happy. I can't even imagine going back to how I was before because it's just darkness."

“一开始的一切并不都是美好的。我转变的前两个月是很艰难的，直到我开始看到身体上的变化···我精神状态的好转使我终于能够醒来开始真正的生活，我很开心；我甚至不能想象回到以前的我，因为那太黑暗了。”

It's been six months since Westling began taking testosterone. He's upbeat and optimistic, unguardedly sharing details about his plans to get top surgery to reconstruct his chest, his plans to move back to New York, his plans to finally connect with the transgender community, his plans to return to fashion. (He hasn't taken on new work since walking at Paris Fashion Week last October.)

Westling服用睾酮素已经六个月了。他十分乐观地、毫无保留地分享了他接下来的计划的细节：他打算通过手术重塑胸部，打算搬回纽约，打算最终与跨性别群体取得联系，打算重返时尚界。（去年十月巴黎时尚周的走秀之后，他一直没有接新的工作。）

Westling poses for a portrait earlier this month.

本月的早些时候，Westling 在摄影时摆出的姿势。

He's also candid about growing up in Scottsdale, Arizona, where "they look at the (transgender) people like me -- or any gay, lesbian people, anybody in the LGBT scene -- as freaks because they're just ignorant, they're not educated." At his 3,000-plus-student high school, Westling remembers meeting only one openly gay student, and feeling he had no one with whom to safely discuss his gender dysphoria. But those feelings, he says, went back much further than high school.

他也非常坦诚地谈到自己在斯科茨代尔、亚利桑那州的成长经历，“那里的人们把跨性别者（或者男女同性恋者等各类LGBT人群）当成怪胎，这仅仅是因为他们很无知、没有受过相关教育。”在他所在的有着3000多人的高中，Westling记得他只见过一个坦率地承认自己是男同性恋的学生，而且这名学生觉得他找不到一个可以放心地倾诉自己的性别焦虑症的人。但他觉得这些自己的这些感觉早在高中以前就出现过。

"I (have) this vivid memory of me being on the playground in preschool, talking to the girls and feeling completely out of place and not fitting into what they were thinking about, talking about, how their body language was or anything like that, and then having the same conversation with one of my guy friends and it completely clicking," he recalls. "That was the initial thing (that sparked my questions about gender), but as time progressed and we got older, it was even more apparent when puberty hit.

他回忆道：“我清楚地记得，在幼儿园操场上和女生们说话，但我感觉自己完全不能融入她们；和她们想的、说的东西以及身体语言等等迥然不同。然而，同样是聊天，我和（当时）自己的异性朋友却感觉一拍即合。这就是让我对性别产生疑虑的开端。随着时间的流逝，我们渐渐长大，这种感觉在青春期来临的时候更加明显了。”

When Westling was 16, his mother pushed him into modeling, set on seeing her child -- who fit the young, tall, thin ideal -- realize her own deferred dream. Though he initially fought it ("I live on my skateboard, I'm so the opposite. No!"), Westling credits his experiences in the fashion world with helping him come to terms with his own trans identity.

Westling16岁的时候，他的母亲将他推入模特行业，期望令年轻又高瘦的孩子实现自己未尽的梦想。尽管他一开始反对（“我要靠滑板谋生，我跟你想的完全不一样。我不要当模特！”），但Westling认为自己在时尚界的经历帮助他明确了自己是跨性别者。

"Working as a model, you know, a lot of people ask, 'Did that screw with you? Did that hurt you?'" he says. "(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."

他说：“你知道，很多人都在问，当职业模特有没有对我造成不好的影响、有没有伤害到我。我觉得当模特是件很酷的事，因为我这一生一直都在扮演一个角色、一种人格。所以，当我拥有不同的头发颜色和妆扮时，我也从中发现了不同的自己。这让我真正知道自己应该是谁以及该走什么样的路。”

Westling shows a tattoo on his arm that says "Skate".

Westling 展现出手腕上的纹身，上面的字是“滑板”。

Trans models have long had a presence in fashion. David Bailey shot British model April Ashley for Vogue in the '60s, and African-American model Tracey Norman graced the pages of Vogue Italia in 1971 after charming Irving Penn. But both models' careers were cut short when they were outed as trans.

跨性别模特出现在时尚界已经有很长时间了。19世纪60年代，David Bailey拍摄了英国模特April Ashely；1971年，在迷倒了Irving Penn(美国著名导演、摄影师，在任《Vouge》期间拍摄了166个封面)之后，非裔美国模特Tracey Norman登上了《Vogue》意大利版的封面，为这期封面增添了一抹亮色。但是当大众知道他们是跨性别者时，这两者的模特生涯即刻终结了。

"Beauty and fashion is all about illusion," Norman, now 67, told New York magazine fashion blog The Cut in 2015. "So when the doors were opened for me, I walked right through. And then the doors slammed ... Once the doors closed, I was no longer a woman and I no longer got the respect of a woman. People who used to say 'she' now said 'he,' and it's not who I am and it's not the person that I identify with. It's like you, as a person, no longer exist."

现年67岁的Norman在接受“The Cut”这家时尚杂志博客的采访时说到：“美丽和时尚都是幻觉。所以，当前方为我打开了一扇门时，我会径直走进去。然后，这扇门就关上了……一旦这扇门关上了，我就不再是一个女人，也不再受到女性特有的礼遇。过去称呼你为“她”的人们现在称呼你为“他”。这不是真正的我，也不是我认同的自我。这就好像作为人类的你彻底蒸发了一样。”

It's only in the last decade that trans models have been able to achieve high-fashion success without concealing their trans identity. In 2010, Brazilian model Lea T became the first out trans woman to appear in a high fashion campaign when she became a face for the house of Givenchy; and five years later, Bosnian-Australian model Andreja Pejić, who made her name as Jean Paul Gaultier's androgynous male muse in 2011, became the first trans model to be profiled in Vogue. Momentum has only increased since then, and, in recent seasons, out trans models like Teddy Quinlivan, Hunter Schafer, Hari Nef and Dara have walked the runway and appeared in campaigns for some of the world's most recognizable brands.

也是仅在最近的十年，跨性别模特才能在不隐藏跨性别身份的情况下成功登上高定时装秀。在2010年，当巴西模特Lea T成为纪梵希的代言人之一时，她成为第一个出现在高端时尚活动中的跨性别女性者。五年后，在2011年就以Jean Paul Gaultier的雌雄同体的灵感缪斯身份出名的波斯尼亚与澳大利亚混血模特Andreja Pejić，成为第一个登上时尚杂志《Vogue》的跨性别模特。（接受跨性别模特的）趋势从那时才开始发展，并且，在最近几季（时装周）中，跨性别模特如Teddy Quinlivan, Hunter Schafer, Hari Nef和Dara开始在T台上走秀、出现在一些全球最知名的品牌的时尚活动中。

Westling sits on the couch in his mostly bare apartment. Most of his belongings are packed up as he prepares to move back to New York.

Westling坐在他几乎空荡的公寓的沙发上。他大多数的物品都已在他准备搬回纽约时打包了。

However, out trans male models remain rare in fashion, and when Westling returns to the industry, he'll instantly become the most high-profile trans man working at the top tier. He and his agents have already been in touch with past major clients, and he says the responses have been universally supportive. A week before our interview, Westling was shot for the cover of a major fashion magazine (no, he won't tell me which one), and while he declines going into detail, he says the designers he's worked closest with have promised to stand by him.

然而，跨性别男性模特在时尚圈中仍是少见面孔。当Westing返回到时尚界时，他会立刻成为在时尚界顶级最受关注的跨性别男模。他和他的经纪人已经开始接触曾经的主要客户们，他表示他得到了那些人广泛的支持。在我们采访前的一周，Westling已经为一封主流时尚大刊拍摄了封面（不，他拒绝告诉我们是哪一封），他拒绝透露细节，他说那些与他有较多合作的设计师向他保证会坚定地站在他这一边。

But beyond this magazine shoot, Westling isn't sure where his career will take him next. "We'll have to see how this story takes to fashion and how everything takes," he says. "I'm not worried about it. I think it's going to be a good change and I'm excited for it. I'm really, really excited."

但抛开这次的杂志拍摄，Westling并不清楚他的职业生涯接下来会怎样。“我们需要继续观望我的故事会如何影响时尚界，以及所有一切会变成什么样子。”他说，“我并不为此担心。我想这（跨性别）对我来说是一个很好的改变，我为此感到兴奋。我真的，真的很兴奋。”

For now, he's just enjoying the simple pleasure of being called "sir" and being referred to by his correct pronouns, and cherishing the support of his friends and family.

目前，他只是享受这种被称作“先生”和被用正确的人称代词提到的简单快乐，并且珍惜他的朋友们和家人对他的支持。

"It feels like I've been wearing like a mask my whole life," he says. "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.

“那种感觉就像曾经我的整个人生都在戴着一张面具生活。”他说。“一旦我卸下这张面具，就好像我终于......我不知道该怎样用文字形容这种感觉。我终于藏在不是我自己的皮囊之下。我不用扮演一个角色，我不会再去尝试成为不是我的人。我不再感到自己被困在成为（性别上的）中间人这种怪异的状况下。”

"It's been an incredible journey, it's been an incredible process and I'm just really happy to be on this path -- and at such a young age, too. That's such a blessing."

“这是一段不可思议的旅程，这是一次难以置信的经历，我真的很开心能走上这条路——并且是在这样一个年轻的时候。这真是太棒了。”

图文来源 | CNN

编译 | 陈雨昕、谢伊雯、杨雨霏

排版 | 杨雨霏

指导老师 | 刘佳