Munroe Bergdorf

MUNROE BERGDORF MEETS ME IN THE FOYER OF her apartment building in London, her mini Yorkshire terrier yanking her toward me as a Chinese Crested named Nelson cowers behind her legs. I’m there with my overexcitable Maltipoo puppy, who assumes everyone wants to kiss him. Nelson’s having none of it. “Nelson’s the same as me,” Bergdorf says. “He’s quite scared of others—he really keeps his guard up.”

It’s a surprising remark from a public figure so open with the most personal aspects of her life. Bergdorf, a Black transgender activist and model, comes across online as eminently self-assured—whether she’s calling out racism and transphobia on social media or writing articles about inclusion for Black and brown gender-nonconforming people in the beauty industry. She summarizes her campaign to counter the transphobia that threatens her very existence as a two-pronged strategy of “empathy and education.” But, as she tells me on a socially distanced dog walk in early September, this work has come at a price. “I’ve seen a side to the world most people never would, and I can’t unsee it,” she