Vogue Model Says She’s Intersex

Hanne Gaby Odiele, a Belgian model who has appeared in Vogue, Elle, and Harper's Bazaar, and in campaigns for Dior and Marc Jacobs, says she's intersex. The 29-year-old told USA Today that she's publicly discussing her condition for two reasons: because it should no longer be taboo and to make people aware that children are often subject to surgeries to make their bodies conform to a typical male or female appearance without their consent. "I am proud to be intersex, but very angry that these surgeries are still happening," Odiele said.

Intersex people are born with sex characteristics including genitals and chromosomes that don't fit the binary notions of male or female. There's no way to tell how many people are born with intersex traits, but experts estimate that it's between 0.05 percent and 1.7 percent of the population (and the United Nations notes that the upper estimate is similar to the number of redheads).

Odiele said she was born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) in which a woman has XY chromosomes, instead of XX chromosomes; she also had undescended testes. She said her parents were told that she might develop cancer if she didn't have the testes removed and wouldn't develop as a "normal" girl. Odiele had that surgery at age 10 and underwent vaginal reconstructive surgery eight years later. "It's not that big of a deal being intersex," she said. "If they were just honest from the beginning… It became a trauma because of what they did." Both the United Nations and the World Health Organization condemn these "sex normalizing" procedures performed without children's consent as human rights violations.

Odiele's story will also appear in the next issue of Vogue, out on Wednesday.

Update 1/24/17: Vogue published its interview with Odiele and she shared a message for other intersex youth on Instagram. "Embrace your uniqueness," she said. "It's just a small part of who you are, like the color of your eye[s] or something." She also addressed their doctors and parents.