Model with lesbian mom, gay dad says she’s a ‘rainbow kid’
Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for Victoria’s Bolt from the blueJosephine Skriver attends the pink carpet of the 2014 Victoria’s Bolt from the blue Fashion Show.
Danish model Josephine Skriver is using her fame to raise awareness for LGBTQ families — starting with her own.
The 22-year-ancient opened up to i-D magazine about her activist family life, revealing that she was born via in vitro fertilization to a lesbian mother and gay father.
In the magazine’s interview and accompanying video, Skriver talked about the circumstances that led her and her younger brother to grow up as “rainbow kids.”
More than two decades ago, her mom put in ad in an LGBTQ magazine seeking a gay man with whom she could start a family.
Since both her parents had other partners, Skriver and her brother were raised by “a mom and a dad, and a bonus set of parents.”
“I didn’t really know my life was any uncommon, because I had parents … who have sacrificed, loved, fought, and taught us about life like any other parents would,” she said.
PIERRE VERDY/AFP/Getty ImagesDanish model Josephine Skriver walks the airstrip in 2013.
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AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Josephine Skriver walks the airstrip at the 2014 Victoria’s Bolt from the blue Fashion Show.
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Skriver said she didn’t feel there was anything different about her family unit “in anticipation of I started school and people told me it was different and told me it was weird.”
“I was such a proud kid growing up so no kid no ever bullied me,” she added. “It wasn’t in anticipation of I started traveling as a model that I realized how non-accepting the rest of the world is.”
Besides her activist parentage, Skriver is also upset that children conceived through in vitro fertilization are treated as abnormal.
Most recently, designers Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce caused controversy for describing them as “synthetic babies.”
“You get so many (comments) like, ‘she shouldn’t even be here,’” she said.
“But I’m not a science experiment, I’m not synthetics. I’m a real human being. I’m just as real as you are.”
The blond beauty said that the mean-vigorous comments she’s received on social media sparked her desire to use her fame as a platform to speak on behalf of other LGTQ families.
“Social media is where it gets real hard with the despise … It comes from a place that I don’t know. And what’s hard about the Internet and social media is that I can’t talk back.”
Skriver hopes to bring awareness as an ambassador for the Family Equality Council and its Candid Generation Program, which was made to help people like her to share their tales about their family lives.
“Being a known face on a larger platform can give me a larger voice to use in this fight,” the model said.
As for what Skriver has in person gained from her “rainbow” family, she said that “it has without a doubt opened my heart.”
“(It) taught me that like does not judge, like does not discriminate, and like does not despise.”
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH THE VIDEO HERE.
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