Mannequin and entrepreneur Lauren Chan made queer historical past on the duvet of Sports activities Illustrated Swimsuit, which hit stands Tuesday.
“I’m the primary out lesbian on the duvet — together with her personal cowl — and the way a lot which means to me makes that shock really feel so overwhelming,” Chan advised Folks journal. “That’s the place I really feel just like the tears of pleasure and celebration and reduction and neighborhood come from.”
Olympic gold medalist and soccer icon Megan Rapinoe was the primary out homosexual girl to pose for SI Swimsuit again in 2019, based on the journal, and she or he and her fiancé, Sue Chicken, have been a part of a bunch cowl picture final yr.
Chan, 34, mentioned she shot the photographs for the SI Swimsuit challenge in Bermuda in March, and, on the time, she did not know she could be on the duvet.
The journal shocked her by making her certainly one of 4 fashions — together with actor, director and producer Salma Hayek Pinault; social media influencer and former NCAA gymnast Olivia Dunne; and Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles — to have her personal cowl for the 2025 challenge, based on a profile of Chan in SI Swimsuit.
“Lauren Chan is rewriting vogue’s narrative,” MJ Day, the editor in chief of SI Swimsuit, mentioned in a press release on social media. “As a mannequin, activist and entrepreneur, her why is about making individuals consider magnificence in a means that’s inclusive, real and empowering. As a author, she challenges the trade’s slender requirements, providing a brand new imaginative and prescient the place all our bodies and tales are celebrated.”
Chan wrote an essay for SI Swimsuit in 2023 about popping out as queer in her 30s, getting divorced and showing in SI Swimsuit for the primary time. Within the essay, she mentioned she realized she was a lesbian through the pandemic, when she was a profitable plus-size mannequin and vogue editor at Glamour journal and was “compelled to pause and discover non-career-related issues to do” for the primary time in her maturity.
“So, why did I determine to return out with SI Swimsuit? I spent my profession representing girls who appear like me—and I’m prepared for a chapter through which I get to have fun us for who we’re on the within, too,” Chan wrote on the time, including that SI Swimsuit has helped transfer the needle on inclusivity by that includes plus-size, transgender and over-70 fashions on its cowl.
In her Folks interview, which was revealed Tuesday, Chan mentioned her total profession has been “based mostly on illustration and inclusion.” First, she mentioned, she represented plus-size girls as a mannequin, vogue editor and founding father of Henning, a plus-size clothes model.
“Then as soon as I began my journey with Swimsuit, it has develop into rather a lot about LGBTQ people and the AAPI neighborhood, as a result of I imagine I’m additionally the primary Chinese language individual on the duvet of Swimsuit,” she continued. “So though my profession has taken completely different types, the identical North Star has been adopted, and that’s to signify individuals like me who’ve felt marginalized and omitted to have them really feel not simply included however celebrated.”
Chan, who introduced her engagement to writer-director Hayley Kosan earlier this yr, advised SI Swimsuit that her cowl is not only a “fairly image” that she and her wife-to-be will have the ability to see at airports — it sends a robust message.
“Once I was rising up, I didn’t know I used to be queer as a result of there was subsequent to no illustration, and it was typically not optimistic or it was so singular, so I really feel just like the specialness of this second is taking an area that somebody like me wouldn’t have been represented (in) earlier than, and claiming it with pleasure,” Chan mentioned.
Brooke Sopelsa contributed.
