Geena Rocero Bio
Geena Rocero is a Philippine transgender glamour model, producer, writer, director, and transgender rights advocate. She was born on October 24, 1983, in Manila, Philippines. Playboy named her its August 2019 Playmate at 35. Her appearance came during Playboy's contemporary era of international and digital publishing.
Rocero has enhanced breasts, brown eyes and black hair. Her measurements are 32-24-34.
Discovered by a fashion photographer at a Lower East Side restaurant when she was 21, Geena Rocero signed with NEXT Model Management and built a career in swimsuit and beauty modeling. She spent roughly twelve years working across international fashion markets, developing the camera experience that would later become intertwined with a much more public conversation about identity and representation.
For much of that career, Rocero did not publicly disclose that she was transgender. She later described the pressure of withholding that part of herself as increasingly difficult, particularly in a fashion environment where she felt being openly trans could threaten her work. Modeling nevertheless helped her develop a more positive relationship with her body, creating a complicated contrast between professional confidence and the secrecy surrounding her personal history.
That changed dramatically in 2014 when Rocero came out publicly during a TED talk. The presentation brought her story to an international audience and established a new public direction for her work. Through Gender Proud, the advocacy and media organization she founded, Rocero began campaigning for transgender rights and greater recognition of trans people’s ability to define and communicate their own identities.
Production, writing and directing subsequently gave Rocero additional ways to influence how those stories reached audiences. She became increasingly involved in media projects centered on transgender experiences and repeatedly argued that trans people should be participants in creating their own representation rather than simply subjects interpreted by others. Her combination of fashion experience and advocacy also gave her an unusual perspective on industries in which images can strongly shape public perceptions.
Her Playboy feature carried particular historical significance: Rocero was identified in contemporary coverage as the magazine’s first openly transgender Asian Pacific Islander Playmate. For Rocero, the assignment also had a personal dimension. She recalled arriving in New York from the Philippines as a young immigrant confronting a new culture and language while pursuing ambitions that once seemed distant; years later, she described becoming part of Playboy’s history as something that still gave her “goosebumps.”
