Donations for the carefully curated gift bags were collected. Calls were put out and answered for volunteers to serve food, assist with setup, and clean up after roughly 200 guests. In the weeks leading up to it, digital flyers with fresh Y2K-inspired animations promoted the cookout and its after-party on social media. “It’s my way of saying thank you and appreciating a group of women who have traditionally not been celebrated in the most public way. “If I haven’t done anything or left any legacy on the community, I would like the cookout to be what people remember me for,” Love says. Which is how we got to the Celebration of Black Trans Women Cookout. Quarantine prompted her to be more intentional about extending kindness to herself, she tells me, and, in turn, to others. Love, a 30-year-old model, community organizer, nightlife fixture, and ballroom mother has already lived many lives, but the one she found over the pandemic-tinged past year and a half made her reconsider her definition of self-care. For the native New Yorker who grew up in the South Bronx and now calls Brooklyn home, it’s the simple things: relaxing bike rides to her favorite Greenpoint smoothie spot, slipping into something cozy to go shopping in Soho for “something really fly to take the town at night,” and being in communion with friends on the dance floor at her favorite party, Dick Appointment, the queer, Brooklyn-based dance party created by DJ and cultural event curator Kenni Javon. Gia Love is a city girl through and through. Photo-Illustration: by The Cut Photo: Courtesy of DDPRO, Photographer Eve Harlowe.

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