After years of waiting, a trans man finally played football topless with his male friends on a beach in the Canary Islands in 2024, describing the moment as euphoric. Zelah Glasson, a contestant on BBUK25 and fitness trainer, said the freedom he felt was indescribable.
“To play football with the lads – to be one of them– was euphoric,” he said. It was his first time playing since his top surgery, and he basked in the moment with still-fresh scars on his chest shining in the sun.
Early struggles with sports
Glasson’s journey with sports began as a six-year-old girl playing football in the Little League in Colliers Wood, South London, where he was the only girl on the team. He would run around yelling “I’m a boy, I’m a boy!” in the playground, but wasn’t taken seriously and was put in defence.
As a stubborn child, he thrived to prove them wrong and ended up as the main goalscorer. But he still felt like the odd one out. By secondary school, there wasn’t any funding for football, and his interest disappeared alongside the school’s budget.
Finding rugby and fitness
In 2018, he joined the women’s rugby team at Nottingham university. Having never played before, he made up for his lack of skill with physicality, quitting smoking and hitting the gym. His whole lifestyle changed, and he found that women’s rugby felt different – most of the women were queer and welcoming.
“For the first time in my life, my more masculine features were a good thing,” he said. In a couple of years, he became vice president of the team.
Transition and top surgery
In 2022, he started to question his gender and began using different pronouns. He came out to his mum two weeks before starting testosterone, and she accepted it straight away, saying the signs were always there. On 23 October 2023, he had top surgery.
He left rugby behind after graduating in 2022 and didn’t join another team, but kept going to the gym as his safe haven. In 2025, he became a personal trainer, running a freelance business centred on trans and queer people.
Creating inclusive spaces
Glasson acknowledges the challenges trans people face in fitness, from toxic masculinity in gyms to media demonisation and policies like the FA’s stance on trans people in sports. He wants to change that, making trans people feel welcome in fitness spaces.
He runs the London section of the Misfits Lift Club for Not A Phase, a trans charity, which offers strength-focused gym sessions for trans and gender diverse people. He believes exclusive spaces are vital to the survival of trans people, and wants all trans people to feel the freedom he felt running topless on the beach.
