The incredibly talented MJ Rodriguez has been recognised as one of Time Magazine’s Women Of The Year alongside Kerry Washington and Zahra Joya for her impactful work over the years. The 31-year-old is most known for her breakout performance in Ryan Murphy’s Pose and Lin Manuel Miranda’s Tick, Tick… Boom!
This recognition means a great deal to Rodriguez who identifies as an AfroLatina Trans woman. She is aware of the lack of representation and people who look like her in the media and is changing that with her activism and work each day.
In an interview with Time Magazine, Rodriguez stated “When I was younger, I didn’t have representation for anyone of color in the LGBTQI community. Now I want to be the example. I want to show them that it’s possible”
TIME’s Women of the Year 2022, featuring 12 extraordinary leaders who are working toward a more equal world https://t.co/j5CkqPimMs pic.twitter.com/vhZLBHeL7D
— TIME (@TIME) March 5, 2022
The actress recently shared a video on her Instagram which announced her Women Of The Year honour.
She opened up about her path with womanhood and expresses that her outlook of it has changed over time “there were so many perceptions that I had to womanhood. Every girl does, whether she’s trans or not”
She further detailed “I thought it was you know, being in this structure, being this hyper effeminate vision for people to see, in order for people to understand my womanhood, and as time went on I realised that’s not the case”.
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She later spoke about her the influences of her work “It’s what you go through – life, it’s the experiences you go through whether they’re good or bad and I feel like that has contributed to my art and that has contributed to my work”.
Above all, she justified her place as one of Time’s Women of the Year when she expresses that at the end of the day, she is human and that her celebrity status does not exclude her from thinking otherwise “I still am a work in progress – which I always have to say, because a lot of people think that you know, people in my position who have the title of ‘celebrity’, like, we have everything given to us and that everything is laid out on the table, it’s not like that”
This announcement comes fresh after her historic year as the first Trans woman to be nominated for an Emmy Award and the first Trans woman to win a Golden Globe.
This is a well deserved honour for MJ Rodriguez and we can’t wait to see what she does next.
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