Men's magazine Playboy has featured its first ever transgender 'playmate' centerfold in its November issue, a move which the model hopes will pave the way for "all women - trans or otherwise - in fashion and other sectors."
Ines Rau, a French fashion model who was featured nude in a 2014 issue of Playboy, is the first transgender model to appear as a centerfold in the magazine's 64-year history.
"Every woman's beauty deserves to be celebrated," the 26-year old told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "No one deserves to be a woman more than those (trans women) who routinely suffer abuse and are treated like they're less than nothing."
Rau, who has previously worked with Balmain and Vogue Italia, said Playboy founder Hugh Hefner had personally chosen her to be the magazine's first transgender playmate before he died at the age of 91 in September.
Hefner's image graces the cover of the November/December issue, which hits newsstands on Oct. 31.
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