Tracey "Africa" Norman, aka Tracey Africa, is an American fashion model, and the first African-American trans woman model to achieve prominence in the fashion industry. ^{[2] [3]} Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Norman has modeled and been photographed for such publications as Essence, Vogue Italia and Harper's Bazaar India. ^[4] Norman also had a magazine cover and life story spread in New York Magazine.

Early life

Tracey Norman was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1952. Norman identified as a woman from a young age, but didn't have any queer role models to look up to as a child, stating that "I always felt inside, since far back as I can remember, that I was female." ^[5] As a child, she studied women in her life, such as her teachers and her female family members, in order to learn feminine traits. She was a shy and quiet child, and was the first person in her family to graduate high school. ^[5] At a very young age, Norman experience sexual molestation by one of her older neighbors, and for the first time experienced being called a fag. ^[5] Later, in middle school she stated that she was sexually active with two male neighbors who lived in her building. ^[5] In middle school, she and her family survived the 1967 Newark Riots, and remembers seeing army tanks coming down the street where her and her family lived, which was in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Weequahic. ^[5] She attended Clinton Place Junior High. Norman mostly lived with her mother growing up, but for a few years in middle school she lived with her father, which she didn't life. After middle school, she moved back in with her mother and did not have contact with her father until later in her life. ^[5] When she was in junior high school, her art teacher, who she idolized, introduced her to theater, and she got to meet the actress Pearl Bailey. ^[5] Her mother and father were both professional bowlers, and her parents met a bowling alley in Newark. ^[5] They would take her and her sister bowling when they were children. Her parents worked a variety of jobs when Norman was growing up, and her mother eventually got a job in the County Food Stamp Department, where she worked for 25 years. In the summer, Norman would visit her family in North Carolina. In high school, she attended North Tech, and learned how to work on cars, but this was a segregated learning experience. ^[5] Her interest in cars had developed earlier in childhood, when she would drive her grandfather's car. On the day of her high school graduation in 1972, she came out to mother as a woman, and her mother was very supportive, showing her "unconditional love." ^[5] This was a very important moment in Norman's early life.

Career

Beginnings

In the early 1970's, two years after graduating high school, Norman ran into an old friend who suggested that she become a model, and she started modeling in the local Newark area, working with Al Grundy, who was a makeup artist, and Grundy's brother, who was a fashion designer. She and other young women would practice walking up and down the hallway of Grundy's home to learn how to walk on the runway. ^[5] For a few years, Norman worked as a model in the Newark and New York area, and she got to attend fashion shows of famous brands, learning a lot about modeling in that time. ^[5] She had to practice her runway walk a lot because she is mildly bowlegged, but she quickly learned. In order to get into the fashion shows, she would tell people she was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. ^[5] In 1975, Norman was discovered after going into a photo shoot with fashion photographer Irving Penn, who photographed her for Italian Vogue. ^[2] She was not invited to that photoshoot, but got swept up in the crowd of models and found herself being interviewed by the famous photographer Irving Penn. Soon after, she got her first job, which was very prestigious, as she worked with Italian Vogue, earning 1,500 dollars a day. ^[5] She quickly became a very popular model, and had jobs all over the country. Around this time, she also worked in fashion shows in Newark Symphony Hall. Norman also worked for Irving Penn, who promoted her modeling career, and she was billed as the "young Beverly Johnson," which made her very popular in the industry. Norman at this time had a very successful modeling career, working in places such as Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, and Miami; this involved hair commercials and catalogue modeling. ^[5] She moved to New York to continue her career, and two years later, she appeared on the box of Clairol’s "Born Beautiful" hair color No. 512, Dark Auburn. ^[2] She is transgender but kept that under wraps, and landed an exclusive contract with Avon, for a skin care line. ^[2] Around this time, as she grew more and more famous, she began to worry that her birth gender would be revealed. She mostly preferred to work with white brands, and did not initially want to work for Essence, but she did because she wanted to get her first magazine cover. ^[5] In 1980, while on a photo-shoot with Essence magazine, where she was modeling as Cleopatra, the assistant to her hairdresser, André Douglas, found out about her birth gender and told the editor, Susan Taylor, who was also on the set. She said that she felt a negative vibe at the moment when the assistant revealed her gender, but immediately afterwards Susan told her everything was ok. ^[5] Despite this, she immediately could not get work anywhere starting the day after she was outed. Due to the outrage and because it was not socially acceptable, her photos were not published and no company would work with her any longer. She went to see her representative Zoli, and he made up an excuse for firing her, saying that her hips were too big, even though she was a size 6. ^[5] Her career instantly ended, and she struggled to find work, and Essence didn't even pay her for the photos they took that day. ^[5] She moved back to her mother's house in Newark.

Norman worked local Newark shows for a while, and at this time, she decided to move to Paris with two friends who were also models. She and her other modeling friends were very poor at this point, and were financially reliant on each other, taking turns to pay the rent. ^[5] There wasn't a lot of work because her and her friend Sherry had arrived in Paris in the off season. They struggled to afford food, and would eat sandwiches that were made of bread, French fries, and mustard. ^[5] She got work at The Palace in Paris, where she and two other models performed as the Supremes. ^[5] While working at The Palace, she would perform during the gay afternoon party called the tea dance, performing alongside a nude woman riding a horse. ^[5] Later on, in Paris she was able to sign a 6-month contract with Balenciaga. Once that contract ended, Norman found a lack of work in Milan and moved back to New York where she signed with Grace del Marco Agency. This agency didn't give her much work and Norman had accepted that her modeling career was basically over. She ended up taking a job at Show Center, where she performed in a burlesque peep show for trans women. Ever since she has been active in the drag ball community and inducted into the ballroom hall of fame in 2001. ^[6] In the beginning of her ballroom career, she felt like she wasn't welcomed, when she would attended balls in the 1970's in New York. ^[5] She was more popular in the New Jersey ballroom scene. In the late 1980's and 1990's, she competed at the balls to win the prizes for things such as best outfit, and she got a lot of attention due to her modeling walk. ^[5] She worked with the Ballroom house "House of Africa," starting in 1990, and this is where she gained her middle name "Africa," working in New York and Brooklyn under this name. ^[5] The categories she competed in were face, body, and runway grand prize. ^[5] She was very influential in the ballroom scene due to her modeling skills, and other people would try to learn to walk like her. Norman has also stated that she was popular because she one of the more darker skinned ballroom competitors, which made her stand out. ^[5] She was eventually voted in as "mother" of the House of Africa, and held this position for two or three years. ^[5] Norman was so talented that she won prizes from all the ballroom houses, except LeBaija. ^[5] She has won ballroom trophies in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington, and Atlanta. ^[5]

Career revitalization

After a biographical piece was written about Norman in December 2015 by New York Magazine's digital fashion site "The Cut", Clairol reached out to Norman and in 2016 announced that Norman would become the face of their 'Nice 'n Easy Color As Real As You Are' campaign. Clairol global associate brand director Heather Carruthers stated that the company was "honored to bring back Tracey Norman as a woman who no longer has to hide her truth." The campaign focused on the "confidence that comes from embracing what makes you unique and using natural color to express yourself freely." ^[7] In 2016 Norman and Geena Rocero became the first two openly transgender models to appear on the cover of an edition of Harper’s Bazaar. ^[8] Norman also did a commercial for Lexus, and was in the movie "Lady Seven Sings." ^[5] In 2016, Norman was interviewed by the Queer Newark Oral History Project. ^[5] She has had lots of success in her career since her initial interview with New York Magazine, and has done many interviews and jobs, doing interviews with the London Times, and Marie Claire of South Africa. ^[5]

Personal life

Norman says the feeling of being different goes back as far as she can remember. In a cover story for New York Magazine she said "it just seemed like I was living in the wrong body. I always felt female." ^[9]

“I’ve always identified as being a woman. It was New York mag and the London Times and Marie Claire that put the word trans and attached it to my name. I understood the publicity for it and the interest that it drummed up, but I made that very clear in every interview that I never identified as trans. I don't have a problem with people using it. I'm just saying that personally, I've never identified with the word trans or being trans. I guess, because of the time difference. And I didn't grow up around gay people. I only had women around me. I watched how they talked, conversed with each other, how they walked, how they sat. I was just enthralled with the femininity of a woman and that's what I wanted to be." ^[10]

For Norman her life at home as well as school was not easy. She had a father who was battling cancer and a family to whom she was afraid to come out. Although she was nervous to tell her family, she was relieved when her mother extended her arms for a big hug—she felt safe and at home. ^[2] Her mother admitted that she had always known. ^[9]

After coming out to her family, she wanted to start to transition but that wasn't an easy process. ^[9] She has stated that she remembers buying her first dress at S. Klein department store, which was green with floral prints. She wore a size 16, later losing a lot of weight. ^[5] As she went further in her transition, she developed a strong fashion sense, with a particular love for mule style shoes. ^[5] A few years into her transition, Norman ran into an old classmate who had gone through the same transition. ^[9] This is when she learned that she could take birth control pills, without the placebo, to become the woman she always was. ^[9] A little after, she started going to trans clubs and this is where she found a doctor who did under-the-table hormone shots. ^[9] These shots are what gave her a feminine body, her breasts grew and she started to lose weight. ^[9] Realizing her feminine identity took slightly longer than it did to come out. It wasn't until a full year after her graduation that she felt like she could pass as a woman in broad daylight in public. ^[9]

After transitioning, she began to attend local queer Newark bars and clubs with her friends, such as Le Joc and Murphy's. ^[5] Le Joc was very popular among models, and Norman met many famous models there. However, she didn't love going out to the bars, because it was mostly all gay men, and she didn't feel welcomed, feeling that her identity as a woman was stigmatized. ^[5]

In a 2021 interview with the LGBTQ&A podcast, Norman said that she does not identify as a transgender woman, but rather just a woman. ^[10] It is the media that has put the term "transgender" as her identity. She just identifies as a woman, and always has, stating that "transgender means society is putting you in a category." ^[5] Norman has stated that she is an animal lover, and particularly loves dogs. ^[5] She also does not drink or smoke, maintaining a sober lifestyle. ^[5]

Further reading

• A storyline in the show Pose was inspired by an instance of rejection that Tracey Norman experienced by Playboy and The Oprah Winfrey Show. ^[11]
• Laverne Cox paid tribute to Tracey Africa as well as other Black women, such as Tina Turner and Beyoncé, in the October 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. ^[12]
• Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)
• Carol Jenkins sat down with Tracey Norman for Black America in 2016 to discuss her early career as well as its resurgence. ^[13]

References