When she was younger, Munroe Bergdorf didn’t want to be queer or black. “I just wanted to fit in. Now those are the two things that I love most about myself.” It would be almost impossible to watch this documentary about the trans model and activist without feeling a surge of admiration for her resilience and grace. Bergdorf hit the headlines with a hiring-and-firing scandal in 2017 when L’Oréal sacked her as the face of a UK campaign following Facebook comments she wrote in response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Watching the backlash in Love & Rage, we see that Bergdorf didn’t hide away. She went on Good Morning Britain, where Piers Morgan snapped at her like an angry yorkshire terrier. Bergdorf is willing to share a platform with people who deny her existence, and it looks incredibly bruising at times. There’s a clip of her on a TV debate with Germaine Greer; it’s upsetting enough to watch, heaven knows how Bergdorf felt. Her response to Greer is gentle but insistent: “We exist, we deserve respect like anyone else.” The film follows Bergdorf as she hires new management (I could have lived without her managers explaining their marketing strategies) and her rise to appearing on the cover of Vogue.
Bergdorf grew up in a sleepy suburb of Essex and as a child hid copies of the fashion bible under her bed. The only black kid in school, she was bullied; she later found her people at university in Brighton, moved to London and began the medical process of transition aged 24. Her hyper-feminine appearance, she says, is a form of self-defence. She can cope with people taking shots at this put-together version of herself: “It’s like armour.” But clearly it takes a toll, and her openness about her mental health, like everything, is commendable.
• Love & Rage: Munroe Bergdorf is in UK cinemas on 10 and 11 June.
