12 Times Laverne Cox Was a Cover Girl

If Caitlyn Jenner had her gorgeous minute on the cover of Vanity Fair this month, then Laverne Cox has had hours! The statuesque Orange Is the New Black star has been slaying on covers over the past couple years, effortlessly serving up her signature style and elegance. This week, she played Lady Liberty on Entertainment Weekly’s LGBT Issue, heralding “America’s Transformation” into a place more friendly to trans stars than ever before.

We adored having Laverne cover The Advocate last July, offering a more relaxed look and knowing smile to go with the epic story of her rise from a down-home, working-class black trans girl from Mobile, Alabama to the iconic face of the trans rights movement she is today.

In her most instantly recognizable cover, Laverne made history as the first trans person to grace the front of Time last June. Cox stands in front of the now-famous declaration that America has reached a “Transgender Tipping Point” — a place where, as she explained, “more and more trans people want to come forward and say, ‘This is who I am’” and more and more non-trans people can recognize, “‘Oh yeah, I know someone who is trans.’”

Readers of women’s pop magazine Bust will certainly be better able to have the “Hottest Summer Ever!!” if it includes snagging an upcoming copy of this stunning June/July 2015 image of Laverne, breezily rocking a gingham halter (no easy feat!).

While many know and love the vivacious, smiley side of Laverne, she shows she can get serious in last month’s issue of Variety. That is the pant suit and no-nonsense stare of a woman who means business about helping the trans communities who are never far from her mind and lips, even in the midst of all that glamor.

While not a cover photo, any collection of Laverne’s magazine domination would be remiss without including Allure’s breathtaking black-and-white nude. Taken in April, Cox said she initially refused to bare everything — even tastefully — twice. But then she thought of how black women and trans women are too often told they’re not beautiful. “Seeing a black transgender woman embracing and loving everything about herself might be inspiring to some other folks,” she said. “There’s a beauty in the things we think are imperfect.”

Laverne Cox’s sense of humor is never far from the surface, and she showed it off in this flirty pose for SoCal LGBT magazine Frontiers’s April issue, which also promises an inside glimpse of the star’s “go-to karaoke divas.”

Laverne simply glows in this regal — even First Lady-esque — look from the Telegraph’s lifestyle magazine Stella. She sat down with the UK publication this week to discuss the recent boom in trans visibility. “For a while I believe that I did not deserve to be taken out in public; that I could only be loved in the darkness and in the shadows” she shared. “I don’t do that anymore.” Thank goodness for that!

Laverne Cox instantly became a household name after her memorable performance as Orange Is The New Black’s Sophia Burset, a trans woman, hairdresser, and parent struggling for hormone access while incarcerated. The magazine covers have been emerging steadily ever since, starting with this fierce November 2013 cover for urban women’s magazine Vibe Vixen leading the pack.

Laverne doesn’t have to be sporting the finest dress and heels for her beauty to shine through. In this simple portrait for the February/March issue of women’s magazine Muses & Visionaries, Laverne embodies her interview’s theme of take-me-as-I-am “authenticity.”

While much can be said about Laverne’s show-stopping visage and outfits, even more can be said about her work as an advocate. In this issue of HIV/AIDS magazine A&U, released a year ago, Laverne sat down to talk feminism and health justice — and gave just the right amount of blue leather and eyebrow action to make us sit up and pay extra attention.

Though not a cover, we just had to throw in this one final image from September “rebels” issue of V magazine. The reasons are probably imminently apparent: deep V and a hair flip to end all hair flips. Need we say more?

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