Buckle up because this story is a WILD one.
Carissa Pinkston, a model for Savage x Fenty and Marc Jacobs, has had her ass absolutely handed to her after, get this, FALSELY COMING OUT AS TRANS TO BACKPEDAL PREVIOUS TRANSPHOBIC COMMENTS.
Okay, I’ll give you a second to breathe because that first bit was a lot to take in.
[jwplayer RxVyNNso]
So basically, the model said a bunch of transphobic shit online and (understandably) copped a tonne of backlash for it. She then took to Instagram to “come out” as a transgender woman. Except… she isn’t. She then took to Instagram again to confess that this was only a lie to get people to stop sending her hate.
To summarise: She said some transphobic shit, then came out as trans, then said this was a lie and she’s NOT trans. And here we are.
Before we get into the nitty gritty of what exactly went down, it’s important to note that Carissa is only 20-years-old. Although that doesn’t excuse the undeniably shitty behaviour, it leaves me hopeful that she can learn from her mistake and probably doesn’t deserve to be completely cancelled for the rest of her life.
It all started back in May when Carissa (under the alias ‘Rissa Danielle’) started posting negative, transphobic comments on Facebook.
“Being transgender does NOT make you a woman. It makes you simply transgender,” She posted.
“This is how they want to be perceived. In a biological context, there are females and males. This is the world in 2019,” another post read.
Both posts were made on her private Facebook profile, but were later screenshotted and shared amongst the wider community.
Obviously, this mindset is problematic, and comments like this are incredibly hurtful to the transgender community.
But it took two months, and being dropped by her modelling agency for Carissa to issue an… apology of sorts. The Instagram post read:
“I wasn’t ready to come out about it yet, but today I got fired and I’ve been receiving hate mail and death threats ever since, so I’m being forced to tell the truth. I’m transgender. I transitioned at a very young age and I’ve lived my life as a female ever since. It’s been very hard to keep this secret but what I said about trans-women is a direct reflection of my inner insecurities and I have since come to realize that I am a Woman…WE ALL ARE!”
Clearly, it didn’t take long before somebody called bullshit.
An actual transgender model, Aaron Phillip, who knows Carissa IRL took to Twitter to call her out.
imagine being a model who got exposed for being a raging transphobe/saying extremely transphobic shit in the past and then resorting to LYING ABOUT BEING TRANSGENDER ONLINE FOR CLOUT IN ATTEMPT TO SAVE YOUR CAREER…? i know this person irl and she is SO CISGENDER?? Y’ALL I-? pic.twitter.com/GtB55p8Cr5
— Aaron Rose Philip (@aaronphilipxo) July 23, 2019
Carissa then made a second statement on Instagram days later to clear up the whole situation.
“I apologize for any transphobic remark I’ve ever made towards the trans community. I panicked and I thought if I came out as trans that I could somehow make things better for myself, but it appears I’ve only made things worse. I’m truly sorry. I’m only 20 and I’m human. I make mistakes but I refuse to let them define me. I hope you all can forgive me and move on from this because I’m so much more than this incident and I’m not a coward,” she wrote.
She obviously copped a tonne of backlash and has now deleted everything, but I hope she takes this as an opportunity to learn from her mistakes and grow up.
Transphobia sucks. Lying about being transgender is a shitty thing to do. Please learn from Carissa’s mistakes. Let’s be better.
