User:Erinvogel/sandbox

On the Wendy Williams Show Cox was asked “ What is transgender?” and she answered “Transgender… very basically means the gender you identify is different from the one you are assigned at birth. And transgender people’s experiences are really very different so there’s really no one sort of blanket transgender experience, so it’s really about listening to individuals in terms of who they are and accepting people on their own terms.” As did Katie Couric in her interview of Cox, Williams questioned her regarding her surgeries— breast implants in particular — and Cox responded that she did not “talk about any of this stuff” as she believed that too much of the talk about trans people is just about their surgery and the transition itself, not their different experiences. http://www.advocate.com/politics/media/2014/06/10/watch-laverne-cox-explains-it-all-wendy-williams

Following the suicide attempt and after begging her mother to let her attend a performing arts school, her mother finally allowed her to enroll. Cox credits this change with saving her life.

This is from Laverne Cox Is The Women We’ve Been Waiting For By Saeed Jones http://www.buzzfeed.com/saeedjones/laverne-cox-is-the-woman-weve-been-waiting-for#.olo4q9/e/N

Cox calls her arrival at Marymount, where is obtained a degree in Fine Arts, as happening sometime in the 1990’s. Like many others before her she thought she would achieve stardom within a year. In her naivete she adds laughingly “ I thought I was going to take the city by storm.” What she actually got was time doing the New York club scene but without any use of drugs or alcohol. Cox believes she was admitted to those clubs because she had a unique look. She says it was the people she met there “who kind of introduced me to myself.” http://www.buzzfeed.com/saeedjones/laverne-cox-is-the-woman-weve-been-waiting-for#.olo4q9/e/N

Cox admits that when she first head she had landed the role of Sophia she was running errands in the East Village and :had a little freak-out.” This was not that she felt she had “made it” career-wise, but because she saw the role as a chance to educate people. Like most trans actors, Cox usually played a prostitute, and she saw the role in “Orange Is the New Black” as “what I’ve waited for my whole career— I need to kill it.” http://www.glamour.com/inspired/women-of-the-year/2014/laverne-cox