Her story

Gurnaaz Kaur

Her life proves the maxim every cloud has a silver lining. After years of struggles and hardships, Naaz Joshi, the first Indian transsexual to win Ms World Diversity 2018, feels she has reached the point in life where she can become a catalyst for the much-needed change in our society. It is the change in attitude towards transgenders/ transsexuals, the acceptance of a third gender she refers to. 

“Winning this pageant has given me the power to reach out to people, share my story, educate them about the challenges faced by people like me and sensitise them towards our emotions,” she says.

This title isn’t the only first in her case. She is also the first transsexual woman to appear on the cover of a magazine and world’s first to endorse a sanitary napkin. She has made history but her own history is full of hurt and denial. From being bullied as a child in school to being considered a shame by her parents, from having to work as a kid to being discriminated and molested, she saw it all at a young age but never gave up.

“I behaved and felt like a girl since I can remember. I was hardly seven when my conduct became a cause of humiliation for my parents. My classmates, neighbours called me hijra. All this made my parents send me to a distant relative in Mumbai. There, I worked in a restaurant to pay for my education.   I always had a flair for dressing up, styling my own clothes and this was noticed by my clients who suggested I took it up seriously.”

Encouraged by her clients whom she calls her friends, Naaz took up a fashion designing course at NIFT, bringing her back to Delhi, her birth city. She topped the entrance but couldn’t be true to her gender since there was no place in the institute other than male and female. After the course, she got associated with big names such as Ritu Kumar and Ritu Beri. 

Gender issues made her feel unsafe and she quit. “I was living a fight within—my emotions and thoughts of a woman against the body of a man, a fight with the outside world. But that didn’t stop me. I saved up and got sex reassignment surgery and began modelling. Life changed after that.”