Girl Talk: Chatting With the Philly Trans Firefighter from What Not to Wear
I tracked down Casey D. to see how her life's changed since getting made over on national TV.
Posted by Josh Middleton on 2/20/2013 at 12:10PM
http://blogs.phillymag.com/gphilly/2013/02/20/girl-talk-chatting-philly-trans-firefighter-wear/ I was so excited to see the Philly trans firefighter in last week's episode of What Not to Wear, that I had to track her down for an interview. It wasn't an easy feat, considering all I had to go on from the episode was "Casey D.," which, turns out, isn't the most Google-friendly search term. Eventually Twitter was my saving grace, and I @'d and hashtag'd my heart out to arrange a chat with her this week. Thanks to the convenience of social networking, I now know that Casey D. is actually Casey Donegan, a 30-year-old volunteer firefighter and EMT in Flourtown. During our Q&A sesh she spilled the beans about what it's like being behind the scenes of What Not to Wear, how she struggles with trying to maintain her million-dollar look on a working-woman's budget and she opens up about all the hot dates she's been on since she got the makeover.
[...]
GP: Have you found that it's easy to maintain your new look?
CD: Since then, I've gone shopping, but I've never been able to recreate the outfits I had on the show — those are $200 to $300 dresses. I also haven't been able to wear makeup everyday like I said I would [on the show]. After seeing how I looked on TV, I decided to concentrate more on physical fitness than maintaining my makeup. For transgender people it takes twice as much workout to get half as much results ... because of the hormones. I've knocked testosterone down to such a level that the body just wants to grab on to weight. When I was first transitioning, when I was [140 pounds], I was able to pull off much-more-feminine things and it was much more readable. But when I gained weight, I didn't dress up as much. The plus side, though was that I was able to blend in more. I think I traded "she" for "sexy."
