History in the making! Leyna Bloom is gracing the pages of the 2021 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, making her the first transgender woman of color to be featured in the magazine.This monumental casting follows the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2020 issue, in which Valentina Sampaio was the first transgender model photographed for the publication.“When I was a little kid, being mixed race, I realized that people were being mean to me or giving me privilege based off things I had no control over.
When I first started modeling, what I heard the most were, ‘You’re a woman, you’re Black, you’re trans and you’re poor — you’re at the bottom of the food chain,’” Bloom says in a behind-the-scenes video released on Sports Illustrated Swimsuit’s