What surprised you when you first became a model?
AP: You cannot have any sense of privacy. You can't be shy because half the time you are walking around in your underwear. You have to be okay with being felt up constantly by the makeup artists, by stylists . . . It's like being a doll. You can't have any feeling.
You tell a different story to everyone in regards to how you were discovered. What prompted that?
AP: I thought it was funny how all the big female models like Kate and Gisele and Lily all had these interesting stories of how they were discovered and I just thought it was fun to mix it up a bit. And sometimes, there are lots of stories out there about models that aren't true — like Gisele was not discovered in a cornfield, but I remember reading it. So I thought it was fun to play around.
Instead of making your transition private, it seems like you were very public about it. Why?
AP: I felt I was well-positioned to share my story and my experience in the hopes that it would inspire others. There are hundreds of thousands of people who hide their true identities every day of their lives, and my team and I just felt like this is a story that could reach a lot of these people and hopefully help. And obviously, I was already known in the media, so hiding my transition would have been very difficult, and there was no need. I could be proud of it. Obviously it is a very private thing, and I think it should always stay that way, but it's different when you are a public person.
