Regain Your Individual STARdom with Kit Costello

From a young age I knew that I was a star, I was something to be looked at. I was different. I held this confidence and uniqueness because I believed that it was a good thing.

As I grew older into my pre-teen years and subsequent teen years, I abruptly learnt that the power I held of confidence and uniqueness was something that was going to be thrown straight back into my face and would be made to feel like it’s not something that I should be proud of.

This is how I lost my individual STARdom, but how I managed to gain it back.

From the ages of 11-16 I was enrolled into an all boys, Catholic, rugby school. As a transgender, non religious, non contact sport person I’m sure you can tell this was the perfect fit for me…

The power of confidence and uniqueness I held quickly faded and I started to view myself as a hindrance. I totally lost a point of view of who I was and honestly who I wanted to be. My sole focus was to get out of that school. Every single term (a school term is around 10 weeks) I would ask… beg my parents to switch my schools. They never did. In their eyes my three older brothers went to the same school as me so if they can do it, so can I.

Looking back I do think it was the best thing for me. I never understood why they wouldn’t just switch my schools but in all honesty in hindsight, this school gave me a lot of character and allowed me to grow a thick skin from the thick headed people that went there. (It’s also a great icebreaker)

However, at this school I had no one, not a single friend. If it wasn’t for a couple of friends outside of school I would have been completely alone during these formative years.

When I was growing up I would watch Hannah Montana. A show about a teenage girl who desperately wanted to balance the life of being a pop star and a normal teen girl. in some ways I related to Miley (The girl behind Hannah Montana). My home life was starkly different to the lives of the other boys at my school, the person I was at home in front of my family was starkly different from the person I was with the two friends I had outside of school.

If I wanted friends I could have pretended to care about rugby, wear tracksuits and listened to music that I didn’t like. Instead I was the student who on own clothes day wore red skinny jeans, ate in the corridors and listened to Ariana Grande.

Looking back this was me retaining some of that individual STARdom. It’s so important to relish in the things that YOU enjoy, there is power in confidence and in confidence there is STARdom.

Something I failed to mention was that I live on a farm, yes, a farm. Another reason as to why I related to Hannah Montana so much. During the pandemic I was on the farm with just my parents and my pets. In this time I was really able to fine tune who and what I wanted to be and how I wanted to be perceived. I felt that there was still a part of me that was missing and I didn’t feel incredibly fulfilled. I started to do my own photoshoots. Imagine me in a field, my camera on a tripod just hoping that I had hit the self timer button. I quickly realised that I wanted to be a model instead of a photographer.

In May 2021 I applied to 20 modelling agencies only to be declined by all of them… except for one. I was starting to regain my STARdom at this point, I was believing myself again. That inner child who possessed the confidence, the uniqueness and the power, they were back. I thought I had found that purpose I was looking for that would make me feel fulfilled.

By the end of 2022 after I had been modelling for just over a year I started to feel more comfortable exploring my gender identity, something that once again I was suppressing just as a means of survival. I wouldn’t have survived an all boys, catholic, rugby school while exploring my gender. This was euphoric, I started to dress how I wanted to, express who I truly was and summon that STARdom that I knew was inside of me. That inner child was shining.

To me, finding your STARdom is finding yourself.

I left my modelling agency, started to work freelance here and there and put my energy into a project that was solely mine, my podcast ‘Self Interrupted with Kit Costello’.

“Self Interrupted with Kit Costello’, my podcast, has turned into something that I genuinely didn’t think it would. I didn’t think I would do more than ten episodes, I have now done over sixty. My podcast is best described as diaristic, almost like a long voice note to a friend. I really talk about anything and everything going on in my life, from the great Tesco clubcard deal I got, to giving advice on how to not be a victim to others’ success. I love hearing that my podcast has become part of people’s weekly routine. To hear that the kitanators (listeners of Self Interrupted) get something out of my podcast means a great deal to me.