After watching her performance on America's Next Top Model, Isis King wants to make one thing clear:
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"I have a really big personality," Isis told reporters. "I am a really humble person... but I'm goofy. I like to have fun. That part of me [the show wasn't] really showing. It showed more of my struggle, which I do have also."
However, Isis made it clear that much of her struggle as a participant on America's Next Top Model had less to do with the fact that she was the show's first transgendered contestant and was more related to her constant exposure to cameras.
"I think [it] started to drain me so much to be constantly on the cameras 24-hours-a-day and not have any time for privacy at all to get myself back together to talk to somebody," she told reporters.
"On the show I didn't really have a problem with anybody. I see the comments that some individuals make but on the show I pretty much got along with everybody," she added later.
Some of the comments Isis referred to were ones made by Top Model contestant Clark -- a 19-year-old student from Pawleys Island, SC -- who told the show's cameras numerous times that she felt Isis should not have been a contestant on the show.
"I never really knew about how Clark about me," Isis told reporters. "In the house we talked and everything. I never knew that she felt the way that she felt."
Isis said she had never wanted to enter the show labeled as a "transgendered model" and had wanted to be judged "on the same level as anybody else."
Since being announced as a contestant on the show, Isis said that she had received an outpouring of positive feedback from the gay, lesbian, and transgendered community, and even told reporters that she had been asked to be honored by a Maryland civil rights group.
"I thought that was very wonderful. Like, why would you want to present me with an award?" she told reporters sheepishly.
As for what she has learned from her experiences from America's Next Top Model, Isis told reporters that she had learned to stay true to herself and not lose her personality in the face of adversity -- as host Tyra Banks noted as one of the primary reasons for dismissal from the show.
"I learned first, for me [to actually say] 'you know I'm gonna go for it, and no matter what people think about me and see my flaws I'm gonna give it my all because I never know what could come from [that] opportunity," she told reporters.
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She added that she had still to complete her gender reassignment, but hoped to finance it in the next year through modeling and fashion design jobs she hoped to get as a result of her participation from the show.
"I'm a model and fashion designer, that's my biggest passion, I'm an artist first," she told reporters. "Hopefully I can be on runways and get campaigns."
"It goes to show you that no matter what people say or think about you, or no matter where you come from, you can achieve whatever you want," she told reporters later. "It's cliche, but it's true because I'm not where I wanna be yet. But even me getting this far, and from where I've started I've struggled a lot and will still continue to struggle, but I know that I'm moving in a positive light, so I'm happy."
About The Author: John Bracchitta
