The shooting star model Cici Tamez

Did you see yourself becoming a supermodel when you were a child? 

Certainly not. Certainly not, no. I always thought that this side of me that liked to be seen was going to have to be hidden. To a certain age I was raised to believe how girls don’t do this, boys certainly don’t show off like that. If you’re gonna be a girl, you’re gonna be a “good girl” I was told women don’t behave like that… Inside, I always knew women can behave however the fuck we want. Your idea of womanhood or femininity doesn’t have to be mine, whatever my parental unit thinks that means. By the way; I’m saying it like that because I was raised by more than just two people, my grandparents were very active in raising me and we had nannies also. Everyone who was around raised me in different ways. My grandmother always said, ‘you’re gonna be a star’, and my dad would put me in singing competitions, recognizing that I was creative, but always as a boy. They all believed in me going somewhere different, but never with a sense of reality. Thank God I don’t have any singing skills, who knows where I would be now – imagine if I had ended up in ‘Rebelde’? But as a boy? I’m happy that didn’t happen.

How did you make modelling a reality then, and make them believe that was the path?

I stumbled into modeling sort of by accident. After I finished high school in Texas, we moved back to Monterey. When we were there, I was the skinniest tallest person in almost every space I was in, towering over everyone in the bus, prompting strangers to tell me I needed to eat! And I’ve never been shy around food.

Our classic story… 

Totally, I never shied away from eating from eating but I guess I’m just naturally tall and skinny. So because of that, people always told me I should model, which I was not sure about at all. A friend of mine was studying photography and asked to take some photos of me. A small agency saw the images on Facebook and asked if I wanted to model. I was 17, didn’t have a job and they were saying I could make some money doing that, so I started doing some small local jobs. I enjoyed it, but seeing the final images I wasn’t really into them so much, so I just thought of it as a fun way to make a little money. It wasn’t until Nylon Mexico reached out to me for an editorial that I really felt like I wanted to pursue this for real. When I saw those pictures, I felt something, they were sick. They gave me a character to play and had me boxing against myself, I loved it. Posting them to my socials, a local designer reached out to me and I did his campaign, which led my now mother agent Pablo to reach out to me and ask if I wanted to move to Mexico City to do this full time. I actually told him no, so when I came crawling back to accept his offer a year later, the conditions had kind of changed and he asked me to find my own place, come with a bit of cash to get by and he warned me that it wasn’t going to be easy. It’s a tough market, you’re trans so you might not do well economically, maybe find a job on the side… I ended up selling my car and had enough money stashed away to pay for a place 9 months upfront 

Wow, good for you! 

Yeah I just figured, let me pay for a place upfront and if modeling doesn’t work out for a while I can just eat cornnuts to survive, living off Maruchan and tuna is fine…Pablo and I ended up becoming really close and falling in love – platonically – so we were shooting so much and I ended up building a strong book which landed me bigger jobs.

What was your first big job you landed in CDMX?

It was a global campaign for Urban Decay, which was really reassuring – seeing that I could do something on a bigger scale and in a market outside of Mexico. It’s still quite commercial and small there, transphobic and xenophobic towards itself. It’s strange, if you’re Mexican in Mexico, you’re not going to work as much as anyone else – even if they look the same as you, a non-mexican will get the job before you. I would go to castings and get asked where I was from and I would reply “Soy Mexicana..” and they would just say “Okay, gracias” and wave goodbye immediately. 

Did that ever make you feel like you were being set back?

Not really, because I knew the endgame was always moving to a fashion capital.  I wasn’t sure if it would be Milan, New York or Paris, but I knew I wanted to be in a fashion capital where I could work with bigger clients. My agent and I planned that from the start, but it took a while for me to change my passport in Mexico because of transphobia. My birth certificate was very easy to change, no questions, no judgment, no – ‘what do you have between your legs’ – and it didn’t cost anything. Mexico is actually very progressive when it comes to that, at least in Mexico City. The lady at the passport office though was a transphobe and didn’t want to change it for me, so it took me 6 months to get it. I had to report her even – it was a big thing. And then the next problem was my work visa, which was denied also at first, but finally I got to New York aaaaaand… the pandemic hit. These things all seem like such setbacks, but it does seem like when it was meant to happen, it happened, because my first big gig in New York was shooting the cover of Italian Vogue. That was always my dream, I never expected it to happen –  and I’m not sure that would have happened at another time.

Do you think the standards are still very euro-centric, even when they try to be “inclusive”?

Yeah for sure. If I wasnt sort of racially ambiguous, I don’t think I would have gotten where I am today. And that’s very sad. They take every step to make me look less ethnic, they’ll make my skin lighter in the pictures or put me at an angle where my nose doesn’t look too ethnic.

Have you ever seen pictures of yourself heavily altered where you felt like you didn’t look like yourself?

Not necessarily, it’s more modifications to the tones of things. For example, I have very dark elbows, knuckles, knees etc and trust me – it’s something I am very aware of. I always grew up thinking it was wrong for me to be darker in these areas, and I see that being edited all the time.  I’ve noticed that my eyes are made to look lighter too, my skin is edited to not look any tone of brown, things like that. I should say, it’s not always like this… Some shoots are very natural and a lot of clients do have that consciousness and want to show people of color and show that ‘something’. But other clients will want this in a way that is digestible and I just think, “why?” 

How do you navigate some of those things that you are already hyper aware of, being altered. How do you stay sure of yourself?

 I know that these are all ideas that are based in white supremacy. It’s a colonized ideal of myself that exists and it’s not my idea, it’s not me. When it happens, I ignore it because I know in the end it’s coming from high up, someone’s boss who is probably an old white cis male.

Is this something that ever gets to you even before you see the end result? Like, walking into a set, getting in front of the camera?

Yeah, it often has to do with the white-washing of myself, looking at my hairline and the little wisps of hair “out of place” by my ears, being slightly darker around my mouth, little things like that, which are just so natural to me and where I am from. My mom has it, her mom does and so many generations before me did too. I shouldn’t be hyper fixated on that and I truly don’t – not as much as I think about my dysphoria.

What is your next goal? 

My next goal is to get more Vogue covers, of course ! I would love a Mexican Vogue cover, but they’re very transphobic, very xenophobic and they will choose a celebrity or influencer over a model any day… I also want to work for Versace and Mugler, my favorite brands since forever. In my heart I am a Versace girl.

If they did not happen and I quit tomorrow, I’d be very happy: I’ve done a lot more than I ever expected. I don’t know if this comes from an inner sense of insecurity or if it’s because of the reality I live in. I’m not white, I’m not blonde, blueeyed, I’m not a sz 0 person.. I see 80% of the jobs going to white people. And they’re not just white, they’re blueeyed, blonde and very very skinny. It’s like, what happened to the inclusion? It’s sad to say this, but I do go on castings that are trans-specific, and when I show up there’s always a group of blondes with blue eyes and it makes me feel like going home, I’m not gonna waste my time. I will stay and do it because I’m a simp, but… I think I’ve accomplished a lot more than people of my demographic have in the past, and this is something I believe doesn’t start and end with me by the way. I have done some firsts, but I want a whole lineup behind me to do the same and more. I see more and more people getting the opportunities that I never thought were possible for myself, which makes me so happy.