Glamour UK's 2025 Women of the Year cover features nine trans women

Glamour UK on Wednesday unveiled its 2025 Women of the Year cover featuring nine transgender women, prompting a public debate about gender, representation and the boundaries of women’s spaces. The cover, released ahead of the magazine’s awards ceremony in London, shows the nine honorees wearing Protect The Dolls t-shirts and spotlights models, activists, writers and performers whom the magazine described as “groundbreaking voices” amid what it called growing threats to trans rights in the United Kingdom.

The nine women named on the cover are Munroe Bergdorf, Maxine Heron, Taira, Munya, Bel Priestley, Dani St. James, Ceval Omar, Mya Mehmi and Shon Faye. The issue includes a cover essay by Shon Faye that frames the feature as a response to heightened public and political scrutiny of trans people, citing concerns about access to healthcare, exclusion from public facilities and barriers to employment and public life. The Protect The Dolls slogan, created by designer Conner Ives, has been used as a pro-trans rights statement this year.

The announcement drew immediate criticism from author J.K. Rowling, who posted a message on X saying, “I grew up in an era when mainstream women’s...