Casil McArthur has experienced a lifetime in his 21 years. The Colorado native was assigned female at birth but struggled with gender identity from an early age. Having started his modelling career as a girl, and to fit the feminine image desired by the industry at the time, McArthur was pushed to bin a more masculine style for frocks and heels, and, at home, his family denied him hormone blockers. At 16, casting agents deemed him “an inch too big in the hips”. Life had an irony in store: “The only thing that fixed that was testosterone,” he tells Vogue.
He had nightmares about reaching the heights of his success as the wrong person, and couldn’t get through to an otherwise loving mother. “When you give somebody a curveball like transitioning, they can’t wrap their head around it,” he says. Collapse followed – but it was a turning point. In a psychiatric facility, he heard, for the first time, adults refer to him by the correct pronoun. After some long conversations, it was agreed that he could begin his transition.
Soul Artist Management signed him as Casil at 17, and he has since walked for Coach and Marc Jacobs, and been shot by Steven Meisel and Collier Schorr. He loves the way dresses look on his post-operation figure. He plays with make-up and calls himself a male princess. His fiancé is a transgender man who began his journey around the same time.
“I love being trans,” he says, grinning widely. “I want people to see the beauty in trans bodies, too.” Plus, it makes him a better man. “Cis men will never properly understand the hardship femmes go through. I know what they go through.” Slowly, the world is catching up. “My mother always told me, ‘When I was pregnant with you, I thought I was gonna have a boy, but the doctors kept telling me, “No, no, that’s a girl.” It turns out I was right.’ That last part is new to the story when she tells it,” he says with a wry smile.