CASEY LEGLER, : My nature is not competitive. My nature is more academic, more gentle. But I was really good at swimming. ...

... I'm queer. I am 6' 2", I have this weird, funky history about me that involves being an Olympic athlete. ...

... As a swimmer, I was tall, I was as tall as I am now, which is 6' 2". I was this tall when I was 12. So - quite skinny. ...

... My body is proportioned to a male body, like a biologically male body, and so I was trained to swim like the boys. I calculated that between the age of 12 and 20, before I retired, I spent three and a half years in the water. One of the reasons that I quit swimming is at one of my last big national meets, I got asked to - at this point I had come out - I got asked to change in the handicapped locker room and was invited out of the women's locker room. ...

... So anyway, I turned up in fashion with this as my story. ...

... I was put in men's clothes 'cause I fit in men's clothes. The only thing that's particularly unique is that I'm biologically a woman. ...

... A photographer friend of mine, Cass Bird, she said, "Well I have this shoot about a gang, but I don't want to use any boys, but I do want to call it 'Out with the Boys'." And so, she said, "So can you just come and be one of the boys?" And so I showed up. I'm wearing my clothes in those photos. (Laughs) You know, I thought maybe something more fancy was going to happen, but that's actually not what happened at all. I just - that's my jacket and my T-shirt, I'm pretty sure, in most of the photos. ...

... I'm 37. So when this happened, I was 35, which is an anomaly to begin with. This is genetic luck. Like, that's actually all that is, right? I show up to these fashion shoots and, like I said, like, you know, conceptually, they get it, but it's something else when you have, you know, a 6' 2" beast of a human walk in who actually is not performing. They were familiar with dressing up girls, but they didn't - they weren't expecting me, you know? The idea of taking my picture suddenly became, "Oh, do we put her in men's - like, do we put her in women's ... ? If we put her on men's clothes then she looks like a guy. Do we put make-up on her?" And I was able to just say, it's to no fault of anyone's. You know what I mean? Like, would you put make-up on a dude? And he was like, "No." I was like, "Then you don't need to put make-up on me." ...

... When people ask me, "Oh, well, is your work performative." I'm like, "Well if I'm in a dress, then it's - definitely, there's a performative component to it." There isn't really anything complicated or racy or shocking about how my masculinity manifests itself. The fact that this is a biologically women's body, then people are like, "Oh my God!" But, you know, I pass as a guy most of the time. Like I said, people look at me weird unless I'm accompanied by, you know, friends and allies, when I walk into bathrooms. So - and that comes with its own set of problems. What you see is more a manifestation of what it has looked like for me to stick up for my heart. In my work, most of it at the end of the day is about agency and self-determination. ...

... I was in Brooklyn and there were, you know, this group of kids that was like coming down, as they do - where I come from we call them "the children", so all of like the gays and the queers - you know, the children, the kids. And they're walking down the street and one of them was particularly loud. And she was talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, and then suddenly she goes, "I know who you are!" And she looks at me and she goes, "Thank you for doing what you're doing." And she tears up and she says, "You're making it OK for me to be here." At the end of the day, that's what I'm in the business of. Like, that's it. Like, if the image of me out there in the world makes it easier for one more kid to think that there's some f**king place for them, then that's the business I'm into.

See more of Casey Legler's story in her own words.