Chelsea Manning is in Vogue this month, beaming positivity and looking absolutely gorgeous in a red one piece.
guess this is what freedom looks like 😊👙💋🏊♀️🚣♀️⛴️🌅🏖️🏙️ @voguemagazine https://t.co/g7YYNkcd9l 😎🌈💕 https://t.co/nyAUje52bE pic.twitter.com/n4ixFkIdVn
— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) August 10, 2017
good because that water was ice cold 😎🌈💕 >hugs<
— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) August 10, 2017
It’s the first profile on the 29-year-old, who shot to infamy when she released 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks. She was sentenced to 35 years confinement in 2013, but had her sentenced commuted by President Obama in 2017, after serving seven years.
She’s also become something of a transgender icon, and if you don’t follow her on Twitter, then just know she is the most joyous, delightful human on that whole damn website.
For example, here’s her reply to a now-deleted tweet suggesting that “a man” shouldn’t wear “a dress”:
its a swimsuit 👙😏🌈💕 https://t.co/KykofMxIOA
— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) August 10, 2017
Her constant ability to respond to random douchebags online with nothing but joy and positivity is honestly just so inspirational.
Vogue describes her as having “a confidence that, even in a novel city, hits like sunlight at high altitude.”
It of course delves into the crimes for which she was imprisoned, with Manning saying that we need to find new ways to talk about government.
“I’ve accepted responsibility for my own decisions and my own actions,” she says. “I think it’s important to remember that when somebody sees government wrongdoing – whether it’s illegal or immoral or unethical – there isn’t the means available to do something about. Everyone keeps saying, You should have gone through the proper channels! But the proper channels don’t work.”
She tried approaching both The Washington Post and The New York Times with her information, but neither were interested. “I did all of this on leave,” she said, of her scrabbling around trying to find anyone to pick up the story. “I only had twelve days … I ran out of time.” So, her info ended up on WikiLeaks, and she ended up in prison.
During her sentence, she transitioned to Chelsea Manning; she tells Vogue that once the fear of being “found out” by the military was gone, everything just “feels natural.”
“It feels like it’s how it’s supposed to be, instead of this anxiety, this uncertainty, this ball of self-consciousness that comes with pretending to be male,” she says. “It didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t describe it. Now that’s gone.”
Have a read of her full profile here.
