Rain Dove
September 27, 1989Place of birth
Vermont, United StatesNationality
AmericanPronouns
Any[1]Gender identity
- zero gender/all gender/genderqueer
- “I don’t really feel male or female; I just feel like me.”[2]
Occupation
model, actor
Rain Dove (born September 27, 1989) is an American model and actor. They use their naturally androgynous look to model for both men’s and women’s lines of clothing.
Dove began a modeling career after being challenged by a friend to present themselves as a man in a Calvin Klein casting for underwear. At the casting, they were handed the outfit for the test shoot, which was just a pair of underwear. When Dove came in topless, the designer responded by giving them a men’s shirt and saying “Swear to God, you will not tell anyone you’re a woman!”[3] After the show, people began seeking Dove for modeling jobs; three months later they accepted their first modeling job and have since walked at New York fashion week on both men’s and women’s runways.[4]
Initially, Dove claimed in interviews and biographies to have studied genetic engineering and civil law at University of California, Berkeley. They also claimed to have worked as a Colorado Firefighter under a male pseudonym, and to have passed as a man during this time, for a period of eleven months.[5] However, in late 2019 Dove admitted in a video on NBC News that both of these claims (of having studied genetics and law, and of having been a firefighter) were false.[6] Dove stated in the video that they wanted, “to just put everything out on the table, everything that I have done or have said that may not be fair or right or may have hurt people”.[6]
Dove has called themself “a ‘zero gender’/’all gender’ model”[7] and often tweets with the #genderqueer hashtag. Dove has no pronoun preference: “Use she, he, it, one, they … I honestly don’t care … All I’m listening for in that sound is positivity.”[8] They have stated “in all reality… I am nothing. Neither a man nor woman. I am a human. I just have specific anatomical capacities that I am satiated with and do not want to change.”[9] “I don’t identify as ‘male’ or ‘female’ but rather as I am I.”[10]. However, Dove does not identify as transgender.[11][12]
