Charlie Craggs (born 1992) is a British

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

actress, activist, and author from

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Early and personal life

Craggs was born on a

council estate Public housing in the United Kingdom, also known as council estates, council housing, or social housing, provided the majority of rented accommodation until 2011 when the number of households in private rental housing surpassed the number in so ...

Ladbroke Grove Ladbroke Grove () is an area and a road in West London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, passing through Kensal Green and Notting Hill, running north–south between Harrow Road and Holland Park Avenue. It is also a name given to ...

West London West London is the western part of London, England, north of the River Thames, west of the City of London, and extending to the Greater London boundary. The term is used to differentiate the area from the other parts of London: North London ...

. She later attended the

London College of Fashion The London College of Fashion is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, in London, England. It offers undergraduate, postgraduate, short courses, study abroad courses and business-training in fashion, make-up, beauty-therap ...

. Growing up, Craggs struggled with

gender dysphoria Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch between their gender identitytheir personal sense of their own genderand their sex assigned at birth. The diagnostic label gender identity disorder (GID) was used until ...

, but seeing

Nadia Almada Nádia Conceição Almada (born 28 January 1977) is a Portuguese-born British television personality. She is known for winning the fifth series of '' Big Brother''. Career ''Big Brother'' Almada competed in the fifth series of '' Big Br ...

win the fifth series of '' Big Brother'' in 2004 helped her understand that it was possible to transition.

Career

In 2013, Craggs launched her "Nail Transphobia" campaign which provided free manicures to people, allowing them to chat with a trans person about their experiences, in an attempt to reduce

transphobia Transphobia is a collection of ideas and phenomena that encompass a range of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger tow ...

. The campaign began as a university project and grew to become a pop-up salon that appeared at different events and locations. The impact of the campaign was recognized in 2015 when Craggs was number 40 in ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' newspaper's 2015 "Rainbow List" of the 101 most Influential LGBTI people in the UK and again in 2016 when she led the 2016 "New Radicals" list compiled by

Nesta Nesta (formerly NESTA, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) is an innovation foundation based in the UK. The organisation acts through a combination of programmes, investment, policy and research, and the formation of part ...

and ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' newspaper. In 2017, Craggs published her first book, ''To My Trans Sisters'', a collection of letters by successful trans women. In 2018 the book was a finalist in the

30th Lambda Literary Awards The 30th Lambda Literary Awards were held on June 4, 2018, to honour works of LGBT literature published in 2017.emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

, which was subsequently included in 2020. In 2021, Craggs fronted the

BBC Three BBC Three is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was first launched on 9 February 2003 with programmes targeting 16 to 34-year-olds, covering all genres including animation, comedy, curre ...

documentary ''Transitioning Teens'' about transgender teenagers waiting to be seen by the NHS regarding their transitions. The doc was released on

BBC iPlayer BBC iPlayer (stylised as iPLAYER or BBC iPLAYER) is a video on demand service from the BBC. The service is available on a wide range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets, personal computers and smart televisions. iPlayer services del ...

. In 2022, Craggs landed one of the leading roles in the ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the u ...

'' spin-off podcast ''Doctor Who: Redacted'', making her the second transgender companion in the show's history. The

BBC Sounds BBC Sounds is a Closed platform, walled garden streaming media and audio download service from the BBC that includes live radio broadcasts, audio on demand, and podcasts. The service is available on a wide range of devices, including mobile pho ...

podcast was created and written by

Juno Dawson Juno Dawson (formerly James Dawson; born 10 June 1981) is a British author of young adult fiction and non-fiction. Dawson's notable works include ''This Book Is Gay'', ''Mind Your Head'', ''Margot & Me'', ''The Gender Games'', ''Clean'' and ''Me ...

and features

Jodie Whittaker Jodie Whittaker (born 17 June 1982) is an English actress who is best known for portraying the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor in ''Doctor Who'' (2017–2022) and as Beth Latimer in ''Broadchurch'' (2013–2017). She came to prominence ...

in her role as the

Thirteenth Doctor The Thirteenth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the fictional protagonist of the BBC science fiction television programme, ''Doctor Who''. She is portrayed by English actress Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to portray the character, sta ...

Filmography

Audio

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Craggs, Charlie British human rights activists English LGBT rights activists English transgender writers Writers from London Living people 21st-century English LGBT people 1992 births