Miss Spain, Angela Ponce, the first transgender contestant for the Miss Universe contest, claims she was a woman before having a vagina.
Ponce did not win Sunday’s Miss Universe contest — that honor went to the Philippines’ Catriona Gray — but the Spaniard made a splash, nonetheless.
In a video posted by Agence France-Presse, Ponce insisted that vaginas don’t make the woman.
“Having a vagina does not make me a woman. I am a woman and already was before my birth,” Ponce exclaimed. Pointing to her head and then her midsection. Ponce added, “Because my identity is here, not down there. This determines my being a woman.”
Ponce insists that being a woman is only a state of mind and not a matter of actual, physical attributes.
Despite these claims that being a woman is only in one’s mind, Ponce did complete the physical transformation into becoming a woman by completing a major sex change surgery in 2014, a Miss Universe bio page reports.
Even though Ponce did not come anywhere near winning the pageant, Miss Universe officials did produce a special feature for the transgender contestant in a segment entitled “a walk to remember.”