Trans beauty queen’s triumph ‘BEING MYSELF IS THE BEST PRIZE’

‘I came alive. Nine-year-old me thought she was Tyra Banks! ’

“I’m going to be New Zealand’s first transgender beauty queen,” Arielle Keil told herself as she sat bawling in a hair salon after being kicked out of home for telling her parents that she was going to become a woman.

Named Andrew at birth but having never felt male, Arielle had for years experienced bullying, feelings of confusion and depression, and suicidal thoughts. But her quest to become a beauty queen carried the 27-year-old Aucklander through the loneliness and tears that came before she underwent life-changing gender reassignment surgery.

Nineteen months on, Arielle has not only been crowned Aotearoa’s first transgender beauty queen, winning Miss Intercontinental NZ 2020, but she’s also enjoying an unexpected