A TRANSGENDER beauty contestant who says she was sacked from her job in a factory for wearing too much make-up and rejected for a job in a cosmetics shop has spoken of her struggle to find work.

Pammy Rose, who hit the headlines when she reached the final of a beauty contest without organisers realising she had been born a boy, says she has applied for hundreds of jobs but that no-one wants to employ her.

The 22-year-old, of Seaham, County Durham, who was born Paul Witten, is now suffering from anxiety due to her negative experiences of trying to find a job.

She said: "I tell people I am transgender as I am not going to hide who I really am.

"I have tried so hard to get a job but I feel like I am being discriminated against because people do not see me as a woman.

After countless rejections, she finally got a job working in a food factory in January 2014.

"In the interview I told them I was transgender and needed to wear make up to feel confident. I agreed to tone it down because of hygiene rules and they were fine with it."

But after ten months of working there Pammy was devastated when the company told her it was letting her go as she wore too much make up.

She later went for an interview at a beauty shop where the man conducting the interview said he could see her working there.

"When I told him I was transgender his face dropped and I didn't hear from him again.

"I have applied to work in other shops where I live but I never hear anything back. I know it is because I am transgender."

Pammy first told her mum, Julie, 49, that she did not want to be in her male body at the age of just four.

As a young boy, she would dance and play with Barbie dolls and was singled out and bullied at school.

But at the age of 14, Pammy decided to embrace who she really was and started growing and bleaching her hair, wearing make-up and the girls' uniform instead of the boys'.

A joke about her looking like Pamela Anderson soon led to her officially changing her name at 18 to Pammy Rose. The following year, aged 19, she began taking hormones.

In spring 2013 when she was 20-years-old she was entered into a local beauty contest - The Face of Sunderland - and made it to the final without the organisers realising she was transgender.

Two years on Pammy is still on an NHS waiting list for gender reassignment surgery.

She said: "I hope one day I will find a job and an employer who will accept me for being me."