Model Accused of Transphobia Admits She Lied About Being Transgender Because She 'Panicked'

A model who recently admitted to pretending to be a transgender person says she is “taking full responsibility” for her words.

In a Tuesday interview with BuzzFeed News, Carissa Pinkston said she feels “like a trans person in a way” as she was subjected to bullying in high school, just like many trans people.

"I remember being in school being little and taking tissues and trying to put them in my shirt," she was quoted as saying.

The model denied, however, that she'd lied about her gender identity in an attempt to avoid a backlash.

"It was never to avoid any backlash, but I did panic," she said. "And I do know what it’s like to be bullied and picked on for being different. And I wanted to fit in a community. Just in that moment, I didn’t know what to do."

Pinkston came out as a trans woman last week, months after her comments about the trans community provoked a public backlash.

In a now-deleted Instagram post, she claimed to have transitioned to female “at a very young age”:

“It’s been very hard to keep this secret but what I said about trans-women is a direct reflection of my inner insecurities and I have since come to realise that I am a woman.”

This revelation followed a social media storm which erupted in May after Pinkston stated that “being transgender does not make you a woman. It makes you simply transgender”.

“This is how they (transgender people) want to be perceived. In a biological context, there are females and males. This is the world in 2019,” she said.

These statements were widely condemned as transphobic and led to Pinkston being fired from her agency, Savage x Fenty.

Shortly after her coming-out, a transgender model who knows Pinkston publicly accused her of lying about being transgender.

Pinkston – who worked for Nike, Marc Jacobs, Prabal Gurun and more – was then forced to confess that she indeed lied to cover up her insecurities.

“I panicked and I thought if I came out as trans that I could somehow make things better for myself, but it appears I’ve only made things worse,” she said over the weekend in a post that has since also been deleted.

“I’m truly sorry. I’m only 20 and I’m human. I make mistakes but I refuse to let them define me. I hope you all can forgive me and move on from this because I’m so much more than this incident and I’m not a coward.”