Author: patrick

Jamie Alexander,  couldn’t find a good option for bathing suit bottoms for his transgender daughter Ruby, so he decided to create his own. Ruby Alexander’s parents worried their transgender daughter might not feel comfortable at the beach, so her dad created a line of swimwear bottoms for transgender girls. Jamie Alexander came up with the idea for the company Rubies when he and his daughter Ruby, who is transgender, were getting ready for a trip to Panama and he wanted to shield her from any possible hurtful reactions. She was 11 at the time and had already identified as female for a few years. But going to the beach presented a different challenge. “In the early days, when she socially transitioned, we put her in boys’ clothing for gym and swimming,” said Alexander, who lives in Toronto. “She was reluctantly going along with us. Then last May, before a camping trip with family friends, Ruby said she wanted to wear a bikini. “No one cared, no one really said anything about it,” said Alexander of the fitted girls’ bathing suit bottoms, but that was in a group of trusted friends and he worried about what might happen months later, on their upcoming trip to Panama. It started Alexander, an entrepreneur in the tech industry, on the hunt for a solution for his daughter and others in her position. Rubies bathing suit...