Lives in transit

[Butterfly]

Lives in transit
The Australian
By Sian Powell
04 January, 2010


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/lives-in-transit/story-e6frg8h6-1225875460017


SHE sits in a bamboo chair in the steaming Bangkok heat, slim and elegant in a long skirt and a black sleeveless vest. Her eyebrows are delicately plucked, her ears pierced, her hair long and wavy. She turns and smiles sweetly. She has been a woman for less than a fortnight.

Tara was never happy with her masculinity. After years of taking hormones, she finally decided to take the plunge and change gender. Earlier this year she had a series of operations to remove her male genitalia, construct a woman's genitals, augment her breasts and reduce her Adam's apple.

[Nero]

While she doesn't expect to win a beauty contest, Tara has been messing around with make-up with her new friend, Claudia, a 24-year-old from Sydney's beachside suburbs. Claudia isn't her real name, and she doesn't want her photo published, but she transformed into a woman so successfully that she has done some photographic modelling work. But the transformation wasn't completely successful because Claudia, caught up with love problems, forgot to keep dilating her vagina and it closed over. She is back in Bangkok for surgical correction and another vagina – this time made from skin from her colon.

Ouch. Poor girl.