Laverne Cox: My Time Cover ‘About All Of My Trans Siblings’

Earlier this month, Laverne Cox became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time magazine, but the actress said the history making moment is about more than herself.

“I really think that the cover is not really about me,” Laverne told Access Hollywood Live’s Billy Bush and Kit Hoover on Friday. “It’s about all of my trans siblings who have been told that their lives don’t matter, that their voices don’t matter. This is hopefully a symbol that their lives do matter and that their dreams are possible.”

Laverne, who stars on Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” opened up to Billy and Kit about the tough time she went through in Mobile, Ala., as a youngster.

PHOTOS: ‘Orange Is The New Black’ Season 2 Posters

“I didn’t act the way that someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act according to the other kids. … I think a lot of the bullying I experienced was about policing gender and about enforcing gender – ‘you need to act this way,’” she said.

Nowadays, the actress said she has seen social media play a role in helping people be themselves.

“More and more trans people are coming forward and saying, ‘This is who I am,’ and living visibly and telling their stories, because of social media, because of the internet and I know that the more people get to know people as people and hear their stories and relate to folks, then the misconceptions that we have about people who are different from us melt away,” she said.

“OITNB” Season 2 is on Netflix now.

Jolie Lash

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