Inès Rau

is a French Algerian model. She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for November 2017, and the first openly transgender Playmate. Ines was born in Paris and she's of Algerian descent. her father is Algerian and her mother is French Moroccan. she was Assigned as male at birth, Ines transitioned and underwent sex reassignment surgery at the age of 16 with the support of her parents, after being inspired by the life story of English trans model Caroline Cossey. Afterwards, she lived as a woman but did not divulge her transgender identity until she was 24. After turning 18, Ines started dancing for DJs in Ibiza, during which she became friends with David Guetta. In 2013, at age 24, she first posed nude with Tyson Beckford for a spread in OOB, a French luxury magazine, shortly after coming out as transgender. In May 2014, she first appeared in Playboy's "A-Z issue" in a spread titled "Evolution" that aimed to depict the growing acceptance of gender identities beyond the male-female binary. She became the second transgender woman to be featured in Playboy after Cossey in 1981, and the first who came out voluntarily (Cossey was outed against her will and reappeared in the magazine in 1991). In October 2017, Cooper Hefner, announced that Ines would appear as "Playmate of the Month" in the magazine's November/December 2017 issue, making her the first openly transgender woman to be featured this way. Hefner likened the choice to feature Rau to his father's decision to feature Jennifer Jackson as the first African-American model to appear in Playboy as a Playmate in 1965. Following her coming-out, Rau became more active campaigning for transgender rights.