



When 29-year-old Benjamin Melzer, the first transgender man to be on the cover of the German edition of Men’s Health, stopped by BuzzFeed News for a chat, he brought along his mom Margret. Soft-spoken and low-key, Melzer doesn’t demand attention — until he gets in front of a camera, where he somehow feels at home.



“Modeling, standing in front of the camera is so my thing. It doesn't feel like work. I just love it,” Melzer said. “I don't care if it's all day long and if it's exhausting, if I'm freezing — I just love it. It feels right for me.”

Melzer grew up near Cologne, Germany, knowing early on that he felt like a boy. “Since I was little, I looked up to cover models, like being on Men's Health or GQ, like really masculine men with good bodies, good physiques.” Yet he also felt like the ideal those men represented were out of reach for him, until he started medical transition at 24. Through hard work at the gym, he found his own body resembling those men. And eventually, he started doing some amateur modeling.

