The UK's first ever Miss Transgender United contest takes place in London today It comes at a time when, following the much-applauded coming-out of reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner and the broadcasting of the first BBC trans comedy, Boy Meets Girl, transgender issues are snowballing in profile. But the pageant, the first national competition of its type, is not without controversy. Some, for instance, have complained that the first prize of full gender reassignment surgery is inappropriate. Others see the contest as objectifying. For Jai Latto, though, finalist and the winner of the Glasgow heat, it is an opportunity to get some political messages across. It is a chance to be a role model, a chance to get transgender issues heard, to campaign for the many charities and causes she supports.

Latto lives in the tiny village of Walkerburn in the Borders, just a couple of miles from the slightly larger village of Innerleithen, where we meet. When she wanders down the dozy main street, she stands out – though no more than any remarkably beautiful woman wearing a telephone-box red jacket and crimson lipstick would. In fact, she is very much part of this village: she used to work in the local hotel and went to school here. Though she spent her late teens and early twenties living in Edinburgh, clubbing and doing drag as a gay male, she has, currently, no desire to leave the area. “I prefer to be here because it's a close-knit community. It’s like everyone supports you. It’s sort of like a big family. Everyone has your back. Everyone knows my story. They’re all supportive.”

It feels a long way from the glamour and hype of the London finals; from getting her new wig primped in one of the capital’s salons, and trying her hand, possibly, at one of the other smaller transgender pageants that happen to be on this weekend. Though she wants to win, Latto is sceptical about the first prize of a voucher for £10,000 of gender reassignment surgery. She doubts she would use that voucher. Still early in her transition, which she began in November, she only just came out in April, at 22 years old. “I’m not on hormones. I just dress as female 100% of the time,” she says.

“I think it’s a stupid idea,” she adds, “to give someone in such an early stage as me full gender reassignment. For instance, I’ve not had full laser treatment."

Latto is also a reminder that not every transgender person wants to transition in the same way. She didn’t, she says, like being on hormones. "I’ve been on hormones before and all that really did to me was make me fat. It didn’t make me feel more a woman.”

Some in the transgender community, meanwhile, see trans beauty pageants as old-fashioned and objectifying. They worry that in a world where many transwomen struggle to pass as female, or to look conventionally pretty, it increases the pressure. Latto says she understands that view. “I think some transwomen do not like the idea of pageants because it pushes the whole idea that the only way to be accepted is to be pretty and blendable.” It’s the same reason, she notes, that some don’t see Caitlyn Jenner, the actress Laverne Cox and the boxing promoter Kellie Maloney as good role models. “They think they’re giving a false sense of how it actually is to transition. These women are getting accepted into society because they have money, they have facilities, they have beauty. Other women might not have that and struggle to be accepted.”

Nevertheless, she observes that these pageants can be an important platform from which to highlight transgender issues. “We need this kind of thing,” she says, “to push equality forward. At the end of the day if we don’t let the beautiful ones talk, no one will end up talking. The women who aren’t confident with their looks and are rather shy aren’t going to stand up for their equality. It’s the girls who are using their looks who are getting the press. So they’re using their looks for a positive thing.”

Does she ever feel objectified? “I get frustrated mostly from the way that men look at me. They don’t look at me as a person. They look at me more as a sex object, or as a fetish. That’s what irritates me. A lot of men talk to me because it’s a stepping stone for their sexuality, or they’re curious about certain things. That’s what frustrates me.”

Latto hopes not only to enter beauty contests for transwomen, but also, ultimately, mainstream pageants like Miss Earth and Miss International UK. Earlier this year, she entered Miss Earth, and got through the initial stages, only to discover later that she was not eligible. This she sees as discrimination against transwomen.

“I thought I would be able to do it because with Miss Universe you’re allowed to be transgender,” she explains.“I think if I was later stage into my transition I would have fought it a bit more. But because all my official identification is still male, it’s hard. But I think if I get the pageant for Miss Trangender United, I would push for other pageants to change their rules.”

Next week she is also up for a role model award at the LGBTi Icon awards. What marks her out is quite how involved she is in LGBTi organisations and activism. She actively supports the Time For Inclusive Education campaign to make LGBTi education statutory; she has made a film with Fixers about what it means to date a transwoman; she speaks of wanting to address the problems of isolation for LGBTi people, and in particular transwomen, in the Borders; she plans among other things to set up a business and charity helping transwomen just coming out with style, beauty and confidence issues.

Latto has long watched beauty pageants. Her family, she notes, are "100%" behind her – particularly her father, who , she says, pays for much of it: the real hair wig, the ballgowns, the alterations. As a child she remembers going to Miss Tiffany, a transgender contest in Thailand, where she was born and where her family still has a home. More often than not, she recalls that the contests she liked were the ones for “people who don’t fit in”. Pageants, she says, like Miss Jumbo Queen Thailand, for larger-size women. “I always wanted to enter a pageant. But in my mind the pageants that I could enter would only be Miss Tiffany or Miss Star Trek or something out of the box.”

Because of this her initial plan had been to enter Miss Tiffany. “That was really the only pageant I could think of that was accessible to me. Then this pageant came out. And this is sort of like a stepping stone. Because Miss Tiffany - that’s the premier league. ”

The high profile that might come with a Miss Transgender United win, is, however, something, she observes, that could have its negatives. She would no longer be able to step out and blend so easily.

“I was out clubbing a few weeks ago and I felt quite frustrated because people seemed to be outing me just because they knew who I was. They knew my story. They were telling people around them who I was. I don’t want to be looked at as a transwoman, or ‘used to be a man’. I want to be a female, a girl.”