Giuliana Farfalla: German Playboy’s first transgender cover star

Giuliana Farfalla has become the first transgender woman to appear on the cover of German Playboy.

The cover of the latest edition shows the 21-year-old model posing in a skimpy white brief, with a caption dubbing her “a jungle star like never before”, in reference to her upcoming appearance on the German version of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here.

In an Instagram post, Farfalla shared an image of the cover and said she was “very proud of the result”.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

German Playboy editor-in-chief Florian Boitin told Deutsche Welle he thought the decision would have met with the approval of the magazine’s founder, Hugh Hefner, whom Boitin described as "resolutely opposed to all forms of exclusion and intolerance”.

Farfalla is the second transgender cover model in Playboy history, following French model Ines Rau, who graced the cover of US Playboy in November last year.

Farfalla, who hails from south-west Germany, began her physical transition at the age of 16 but told German magazine Stern that she had felt like a girl since the age of three.

She got her modelling break last year, when she was chosen to compete on Germany’s Next Topmodel. Under her birth surname, Radermacher, she impressed head judge Heidi Klum enough to come 11th out of 28 catwalk hopefuls.

"I wanted to prove to myself that I can do that, that I will not be marginalised just because I'm different,” she told Stern.