Indya Rises

THE TRANS ACTOR, MODEL, AND ACTIVIST HAS ENDURED BULLYING, BEATINGS,ADDICTION, HOMELESSNESS, AND SEX TRAFFICKING, ALL IN THE NAME OF BEING WHO SHE TRULY IS.HERE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, SHE SHARES HER HARROWING, ULTIMATELY INSPIRATIONAL TALE.

- Jada Yuan

The figure gliding like a lioness through a Rite Aid in Manhattan’s Lower East Side would turn heads, if there were any heads to turn here, two minutes from midnight. Indya Moore’s hair isn’t as Afro-tastic as the wig she wears to play Angel, a sex worker longing for love on FX’s Pose—which dives deep into New York’s late-1980s LGBTQ black and Latinx ballroom community—but her curls are magnificent. Some fall in her face, some stand at attention, as if keeping watch over their owner, who has both a smile that makes you want to hug her and a Bronx-bred air of being able to hold her own in a fight if she has to.

(A note on gender pronouns: Indya is nonbinary and prefers to use “they” and “them,” but is also navigating how that works in a society that has long oriented around cisgender or binary trans identities. Most people around Indya use “she,” which Indya says is fine to use throughout this story. See her Instagram post in April about this very topic.)

We’re three days and some nine hours of confessional conversations into knowing each other when Indya asks if I’ll come with her to the pharmacy to pick up her hormone prescription. I don’t hesitate. It’s the kind of errand girlfriends run together, because we all have lives but company makes them better.