Looking Back at Leyna Bloom’s Start in Ballroom – Swimsuit

Leyna Bloom’s extraordinary trailblazing career developed in the house-ballroom community. It’s where she attributes learning true self-acceptance and confidence. The SI Swimsuit 2021 cover model found her stride when she moved to New York City at 17, and eventually found a community in a house. “A house is a family network, an ageless unit of people of color of queer culture,” Bloom says. “They come together because either their parents kicked them out on the street, or they’re looking for people just like them. They find each other and they create a house. There’s a ‘mother’, there’s a ‘father’ and there’s ‘children’. You basically go to balls to compete and it’s a healthy, beautiful competition where you can go back and forth and banter with your other peers.”