Thursday, March 15, 2012

Trans Women Go Under the Knife.

A look at "Facial Feminization Surgery" recently was featured on ABC News. Here's the intro:
Sarah, now 50, came out as transgender but was still "being clocked" as male.
"You are walking through the mall and someone turns and says, 'Oh, my god, it's a man dressed as a woman,'" she said. "They figure it out."
But that rarely happens anymore. Thanks to facial feminization surgery in 2007, Sarah, not her real name, is living with the face she was believes she was supposed to be born with.
It was the first big step in her new life as a woman and in 2009, Sarah went on to have sex reassignment surgery."

That's the good news for most of us. The bad news is this: costs for the procedure can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. With little or no insurance coverage for the procedure, "FFS" is the impossible dream for someone like me.
Ironically, a natural form of "hormone replacement therapy"-age provides a different blurring of the genders and a glimmer of hope.

"Women become more masculine-looking as they get older, and Spiegel (the featured doctor) is also seeing an increase in interest in surgery among women who are not transgender.
"Why are some women more attractive than others?" he asked. "A big part is as women age and lose their fertility, they lose their femininity."
Their eyebrows descend and get flatter, their cheeks are less full, and with the jowls of aging, the tapers of the jaw disappear."

Unless the Veteran's Administration magically begins to approve this kind of surgery for transgendered vets such as myself, it certainly looks as if the magic of make up will be my best friend!

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