Editor-in-chief Florian Boitin said Tuesday that putting 21-year-old model and TV personality Giuliana Farfalla on the cover of the January issue was in line with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's animus toward "all forms of exclusion and intolerance."
Farfalla, who made a name for herself as a model after participating in Heidi Klum's "Germany's Next Topmodel", on Tuesday posted the cover image of German Playboy's January issue to her Instagram account.
"My dears, I'm on the latest Playboy cover and I'm very proud of the result," She wrote.
Farfalla was born Pascal Radermacher in Breisgau in southwestern Germany and decided to change her gender at the age of 16. She says she wants to be successful as a woman rather than as a transgender model, but it would make her happy if she encouraged other transgender people with her success.
US Playboy featured its first ever openly transgender playmate earlier in November. A French fashion model Ines Rau says that Hefner had personally chosen her to be the magazine's first transgender playmate before he died at the age of 91 in September.
"Every woman's beauty deserves to be celebrated," 26-year-old Rau told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.
Transgender models are becoming increasingly visible internationally in fashion brands and media. In March the French edition of Vogue featured a transgender model for the first time on its cover, as did Marie Claire Spain in 2016.
