On May 29, 2014, Laverne Cox, the transgender actor and advocate best known for her Emmy-winning performance on Orange Is the New Black, appears on the cover of TIME magazine's June 14 issue for their story "The Transgender Tipping Point." The moment is widely cited as a turning point for transgender representation in mainstream media.
The cover story came after public backlash over TIME's exclusion of Cox from their 100 most influential people reader’s poll the month prior. The article discusses Cox’s life and career and examines the trajectory of the struggle for trans rights in America.
Zack Ford for ThinkProgress called the story “perhaps the most positive and in-depth representation of transgender life experiences ever presented in mainstream print media,” contrasting it with commonplace transgender misrepresentation at the time. “Tipping Point” also prompted transphobic backlash from various other pundits and outlets.
In an interview with Teen Vogue six years later, Cox reflected on her work as an advocate and cautioned against focusing on matters of representation alone: "A lot of visible trans people we see are very privileged trans people,” she said. "We don't see the poor and working-class trans folks who are in the hood.”
