Lauren Chan is the first out lesbian to appear solo on a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover

NBC News

13-05-2025

Model and entrepreneur Lauren Chan made queer history on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, which hit stands Tuesday.
'I'm the first out lesbian on the cover — with her own cover — and how much that means to me makes that surprise feel so overwhelming,' Chan told People magazine. 'That's where I feel like the tears of joy and celebration and relief and community come from.'
Olympic gold medalist and soccer icon Megan Rapinoe was the first out gay woman to pose for SI Swimsuit back in 2019, according to the magazine, and she and her fiancé, Sue Bird, were part of a group cover photo last year.
Chan, 34, said she shot the images for the SI Swimsuit issue in Bermuda in March, and, at the time, she didn't know she would be on the cover.
The magazine surprised her by making her one of four models — along with actor, director and producer Salma Hayek Pinault; social media influencer and former NCAA gymnast Olivia Dunne; and Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles — to have her own cover for the 2025 issue, according to a profile of Chan in SI Swimsuit.
'Lauren Chan is rewriting fashion's narrative," MJ Day, the editor in chief of SI Swimsuit, said in a statement on social media. "As a model, activist and entrepreneur, her why is about making people think of beauty in a way that's inclusive, genuine and empowering. As a writer, she challenges the industry's narrow standards, offering a new vision where all bodies and stories are celebrated."
Chan wrote an essay for SI Swimsuit in 2023 about coming out as queer in her 30s, getting divorced and appearing in SI Swimsuit for the first time. In the essay, she said she realized she was a lesbian during the pandemic, when she was a successful plus-size model and fashion editor at Glamour magazine and was 'forced to pause and find non-career-related things to do' for the first time in her adulthood.
'So, why did I decide to come out with SI Swimsuit? I spent my career representing women who look like me—and I'm ready for a chapter in which I get to celebrate us for who we are on the inside, too,' Chan wrote at the time, adding that SI Swimsuit has helped move the needle on inclusivity by featuring plus-size, transgender and over-70 models on its cover.
In her People interview, which was published Tuesday, Chan said her entire career has been 'based on representation and inclusion." First, she said, she represented plus-size women as a model, fashion editor and founder of Henning, a plus-size clothing brand.
'Then once I started my journey with Swimsuit, it has become a lot about LGBTQ folks and the AAPI community, because I believe I'm also the first Chinese person on the cover of Swimsuit," she continued. "So although my career has taken different forms, the same North Star has been followed, and that is to represent people like me who have felt marginalized and left out to have them feel not just included but celebrated.'
Chan, who announced her engagement to writer-director Hayley Kosan earlier this year, told SI Swimsuit that her cover is not just a "pretty picture" that she and her wife-to-be will be able to see at airports — it sends a powerful message.
'When I was growing up, I didn't know I was queer because there was next to no representation, and it was often not positive or it was so singular, so I feel like the specialness of this moment is taking a space that someone like me wouldn't have been represented [in] before, and claiming it with pride,' Chan said.