Jordan Gonzalez

Written by Jasmine Lowe

Jordan Gonzalez is an actor living in Los Angeles who moved from Rosewell, Georgia to pursue a career in the fashion industry. He’s an ambassador for Sharpe Suiting, a queer clothing company specializing in amazing custom suits, which he actually began working with prior to his transition.

“I always had a love and passion for fashion,” said Gonzalez. “When I first moved out to LA, I wanted to be a wardrobe stylist. I did that for a little bit prior to my transition, but I would always have this affinity with men's wear as opposed to women’s wear.”

“Obviously looking back on it now, it makes a lot more sense,” Gonzalez continued. “Not to say that to be trans you have an affinity for men's wear, but for me personally, it made a lot of sense. It all just kind of all fell into place. A lot of people would reach out to me and they'd ask if I wanted to shoot. [When I moved] to LA, I just took every opportunity that I could if it was something that I was comfortable with, and it kind of just kind of went from there.”

Before becoming an actor and telling stories from the queer perspective, Jordan had to take a leap from the security of a typical nine to five job. He traded his public relations job in entertainment to join the industry from the other side.

“With social media and everything just being so in front of us right now, it's so easy to compare our journey to other people's journey and I think that can have such a negative effect on our being.”

“So I was in entertainment PR up until last February,” Gonzalez explained. “I left a big agency job, left the security of the nine to five. It was really 24/7, but for the sake of argument, it was nine to five. I had two phones, I worked seven days a week. It was intense. I left in February and I took the jump and the risk because I really wanted to tell more stories from the trans perspective. I thought it was really important to just try.”

Jordan Gonzalez has gone on to do dozens of print and film projects, one of which is a film whose concept came from the artist on the cover of the previous issue of this publication.

“I reached out and found a manager and an agent,” Gonzalez continued. “I got signed. I shot a short film with Savannah Ward, called Meta, which is going to be a really amazing and beautiful story. It follows a trans character who goes to prom and ends up getting his period. It shows the reality of the situation, but also what it feels like in someone's head who is going through that.”

“It jumps into an alternate Sci-Fi werewolf situation where I can only see myself as a werewolf,” Gonzalez said about the short film. “I think that everybody can see myself as this monster because men objectively in society don't have periods. It makes you believe you are some sort of monster even though nobody else but myself. I won't give away the ending because Savannah will kill me, but I did get nominated for prom King and it's a really interesting perspective and way to show how it actually feels for a transmasculine individual to get their period on such a pivotal night.”

There are a few similarities between the short film and Jordan’s life. A similar experience to the scene in the film happened to the actor as well.

“So I started my medical transition—it'll be three years in July this year—and about eight months into my medical transition, I got [my period]” Gonzalez said. “I had thought, okay, I'm eight months into taking hormone replacement therapy. Maybe I'm lucky and I just didn't get it and it'll pass and then I'll never have it again. Then one day I got it. It was just when I started dating my partner. I remember being so ashamed. I didn't even say anything to her, she didn't even know I had it until a year later.”

“I finally opened up and talked to her about it when I shot a video campaign with this company called Peach Pack, which is Troy Sivan's sister's company,” Gonzalez continued. “They're doing some amazing work by un-gendering period products and making it less of a stigma for non-binary folx and transmasculine individuals to buy those products. As a transmasculine person or nonbinding person walking down a feminine item aisle, it’s the last thing that you want to do, especially when the word feminine is attached to it.”

However, Jordan doesn’t want to just do roles that call for trans actors. Ideally, he would like the industry to get to the point where a character in a project who happens to be trans is just that.

“Ryan Murphy has this show on Netflix called The Politician,” said Gonzalez. “They have a character on the show who in real life identifies as transgender and in the show, you have no idea. And to me, that's equally as powerful as telling a coming out story or coming of age story. It's just allowing that trans person to be an artist and to tell the story without having to say, and wear this label of otherness. Eventually, I would love to tell just regular male stories that might just be Latin because I'm Cuban or might just be an immigrant story because my father's an immigrant. Or anything else that is relevant to a character. But I think it is really important and innately a passion of mine to also tell those trans-identity stories also for visibility purposes.”

When discussing breaking into the fashion and entertainment industry Jordan shared a few tips that helped him on his own journey.

“Just be true to yourself. I think that's so important. With social media and everything just being so in front of us right now, it's so easy to compare our journey to other people's journey and I think that can have such a negative effect on our being. I think that can almost make us want to freeze instead of moving forward and growing and taking that risk and jumping. I think I also use social media to reach out to people. Ask people for help, ask people for their advice, reach out to somebody that you look up to and say, ‘Hey, I'm really interested in this. You're doing great. What can I do?’ Then tell me to go for it. I think we have such a beautiful community and I think if we were there for each other more we can do so much more positive stuff for each other.”

You can follow Jordan Gonzales as he continues on his journey on Instagram at @jordanlgonzalez.