The silicone sisterhood: Among Brazil's poor, there are three sexes: Men, women and travestis -biolo
Author: JESSAMY CALKIN

This
is Brazil, home of the third gender, the travestis. A travesti is a gay
man who aspires to look like a woman, often using silicone and hormones
to give himself physical female characteristics. He is different from
the transsexual (who has had an operation to remove his penis) or a
transvestite (who just dresses as a woman). The travesti resembles a
female, often to the point of parody, but makes use of masculine
devices to seduce.Due Owing to the economic situation of in
Brazil, the travesti is more often than not a prostitute. She (for that
is how they refer to themselves) can earn more than a female
prostitute, who in turn can earn more than a male prostitute. The
bigger her hips and breasts, the more power she wields, and the more
she stands to earn. There are reasons for this: in a strictly Catholic
culture, a man who uses a travesti prostitute feels less guilty about
this acknowledgement of his homosexuality; he is, after all, having sex
with someone who looks like a woman. The fact that the travesti has a
penis, and that more often than not the customer would prefer to be
penetrated by her than to penetrate her, is largely immaterial. It is
the illusion that counts.It is worth mentioning at this point
that in Brazil (and in some other Catholic or Islamic cultures also and
in prison) the word 'homosexual' is differently interpreted differently
than in Britain; there it usually implies being sexually passive with
another man. A man who takes the active role in intercourse with other
men is considered 'straight'. Travestis speak of bichas ('fags') with
great disdain; they are on the lowest rung of the social ladder,
although travestis themselves are considered marginais ('low-lifes').In
the early Eighties, a phenomenon began which had an enormous effect on
the travesti scene. In a crude imitation of the silicone implants that
were rapidly then gaining worldwide popularity, it became apparent that
liquid silicone could be injected subcutaneously into men to create
breasts and 'womanly' hips and buttocks. It was cheaper than non-liquid
implants, but it was dangerous and illegal; the people who who knew how
to do did it (bombadeiras) were often inexperienced and could
accidentally hit a vein and inject silicone into the bloodstream, which
invariably resulted in causing death.The silicone could also
cause allergic reactions; it could fall or slip down the body,
accumulating in the testicles or the ankles; it could damage the immune
system and cause circulation problems, oedema ((swollen tissue)),
swollen legs and backache. Some travestis had more than six litres of
silicone injected. The human body contains only six litres of blood as
it is; another six litres of liquid changes the whole structure of the
anatomy: dynamics, balance everything.By the mid-Eighties,
stories abounded of whole groups of slipped silicone freaks, travestis
who had become hideously deformed, whose cheek implants had fallen down
their faces or who had been beaten up by the police before the silicone
had hardened, leaving a visage resembling that of the Elephant Man.
Further rumours that silicone could be carcinogenic sent everyone into
a panic. Many died, from a variety of complications, and many had
surgery to remove it.Despite all this, Yet the practice
continues. Silicone injected into the face is rare these days, and for
breasts, too, non-liquid implants sacs of silicone gel are more
popular. But many travestis especially still do it use liquid have
their hips, thighs and buttocks injected with liquid silicone in
copious quantities.; hips, thighs and buttocks are frequently
supplemented by silicone injections. Women occasionally use it, and
men, especially rent boys, have been known to use it to thicken their
penises. Bodybuilders use it too. The market price for injections of
silicone in Sao Paulo is about dollars 60 pounds 40 a litre. And Once
you have started, it seems, it is hard to know when to stop. For many
people, it seems, it is almost like an addiction. Many people seem
almost addicted to it. For many it has become like an addiction.There
are reasons other than economic ones why becoming a travesti is an
attractive prospect in Brazil. In a country where extreme poverty is
rife, of such extreme poverty, the travesti scene is something to
belong to, an elite. Perhaps as a result of the carnival heritage,
transvestiteor travesti? culture is firmly established there
(theytransvestites and travestis become television stars and appear in
magazines); for travestis, there is the possibility of becoming
somebody. , and not just somebody, but a star. Despite the fact that
every travesti will assert vehemently that 'inside I have always felt
like a woman', it is also fashionable;. A and, silicone is their tool.
like cocaine, it is cheap and easily available.THE BANK CLERKAdriana,
slim and androgynous, looks like a gentle pre-Raphaelite waif. Twenty
years old, she is Brazilian, but of Italian and German extraction. She
started taking hormones when she was 15, after 'I saw travestis on the
television and I was inspired.' Unlike most travestis, she is clearly
middle-class, and earns her living as a data programmer for a French
Brazilian bank, where her sister is the assistant manager. Adriana She
lives at home, where her parents are unusually tolerant, despite the
fact that her father (who is German) is 65 and a brigadier in the
Brazilian air force. 'The desire to be a woman has always been there,'
she says. 'It is part of my ego.' They Her parents accept her as she
is; her mother wants only that she stay off the streets.But at
the moment Adriana is in a lot of trouble. Three weeks ago, she had a
total of two-and-a-half litres of 'industrial' (impure) silicone
injected into her backside and hips by a bombadeira. Since then she has
suffered high temperatures, nausea, bruising, and a constant limp. She
has stretch marks, lumps and blotches on her skin. She is, she
explains, allergic to the silicone.There was no anaesthetic. The
pain, she says, Adriana, was unbearable. 'But it is the pain of beauty,
as they say. . . .' After the first administration, she developed a
temperature of 40C. degrees. The bombadeira gave her an injection of
Decadron, a drug which that many mistakenly believe will dissolve the
silicone. (It is actually a steroid, used for reducing internal
swelling.) She felt better, and a few days later returned for more
treatment. The bombadeira (who had lost count of how many injections
she had put into each side, so which is why Adriana's body is now
uneven.) Then she narrowly just missed a blood vessel,; and ,, nearly
killing her and Adriana passed out.Unwilling to call the
ambulance (she would have undoubtedly have been arrested), the
bombadeira called a neighbour, a prostitute, who looked after Adriana
for two days, giving her copious vitamins and Decadron until she was
able to go home. There, she began to vomit every time she ate, her
fever worsened, she suffered from shortness of breath, and the skin on
her feet began to peel; a reaction, she says, caused by the silicone.
'I can also feel it around my knees, and it's left stretch marks on my
thighs. There are a few lumps around my hips and I have swollen ankles
and blotches on my skin. My body's rejecting the silicone.'Her
mother took her to hospital, where they removed samples of the silicone
with a syringe, and informed her that it was 'industrial' and highly
impure. (The bombadeira had told her that it was 'imported medical'
silicone.) She was given medication to help with the rejection
reaction; but if that fails, she'll will have to have surgery. 'The
doctor told my mother I might die at any time.' The silicone could
corrode my bones and even cause cancer.'Adriana initially
decided to have the silicone, she says, 'to satisfy my ego'. She had
met knew people who had done it successfully, 'and they were
beautiful.'. But she also knows some horror stories. 'I know of someone
in Santo Andre who killed two travestis and had to flee to Panama she'd
hit their blood vessels with the needle.' She can appreciate the
concept of becoming addicted to silicone. Once you start changing your
body, though, it is hard to know when to stop; it is a form of control,
like anorexia in reverse. 'I know people with 10 litres of silicone in
their bodies. They keep doing it because they don't feel the pain any
more and they can't help themselves. There will come a time when their
bodies they can't take it any more. But there is such competition among
them. When a travesti sees a big pair of hips, she wants an even bigger
pair. The more flesh you have, the better. It's a way of attracting a
man's attention, but they also become ridiculous.'None the less,
Yet she says she would do it all again. 'I hope the doctors don't have
to operate, because I don't like scars. But I will carry on. Not here,
though. I'm going to find a specialist clinic.' somewhere.'Adriana
comes from an exceptional family. Four years ago, Adriana she met a
boy, Leandro, who was working as a rent boy on the Avenue Sao Luis. He
became her boyfriend and moved into her house;, and her mother helped
him to sort himself out and contacted his parents to let them know he
was all right. Leandro went back to the street to see his friends, but
they found out where he was living and robbed the house. Adriana's
mother reported it to the police. Leandro's friends thought that he had
grassed them up, and, one day last September, as he was parking the
car, they shot him in the head. He died on Adriana's doorstep.THE BOMBADEIRAMadelena
won't give interviews, not even for money. She has been offered dollars
1,000 to participate in a documentary, and she turned it down. In her
living-room there are Seventies-style posters all over the wall, and a
man in Bermuda shorts with a very hairy chest is fixing a glass table
and swearing. An elderly transvestite maid is wandering around,
aggressively advising Madelena not to talk to anyone. The maid is
covered in wrinkles, but it is apparent from her big, polished cheeks
and hard breasts that she has had silicone treatment herself. Everyone
is talking at the same time. The carpet, new, is covered with a plastic
sheet. Lying on a bed, very young and very frail, is a naked travesti.
Madelena is injecting silicone into her hip. The travesti is clutching
a cushion to her face so that she cannot see the needle; her fingers
are crossed. There is a garbage bin by the bed, filled with screwed-up
pink toilet paper. Also on the bed is a glass of water, two syringes, a
little packet of needles and a bottle of red nail varnish. Madelena
paints the nail varnish on to the puncture hole left by the needle in
order to stop the silicone from leaking out.THE PROSTITUTEDiane
is 19 and a prostitute. She is friendly and forthcoming, with big,
sensual features, a tattoo on her calf, and secondary teeth in her
upper gums like a vampire. She is upset today, because her flatmate has
stolen all her make-up, and there is blood dripping from her ear lobes
because she has just had a fight on the bus and had her earrings pulled
out. She takes a fragment of mirror out of her handbag to check her
wounds. It is a sad little broken thing. She also uses it this as a
weapon.Diane is saving up for silicone treatment. She is looking
for a suitable bombadeira. She is planning to have a litre injected
into each hip, which will cost 60,000 cruzeiros (about pounds 80). As a
prostitute she charges 5,000 cruzeiros (dollars 10) (pounds 6.50) for
'the programme' on a good night, and 3,000 (pounds 4) on a bad night.
For a blow job oral sex it's a mere 2,000 (pounds 2.50).She
describes what she has heard about the pain ('It's not the needle, it's
the silicone going in . . .') and how you have to sleep sitting up
wearing a special bra (for breast treatment), and on your belly with
your ass bottom in the air (for hips and backside). Her cousin, she
says, had a breast application and then was beaten up by her nephew.
Now the silicone is spread lumpily all over her chest and she can't
afford to have it removed. But Diane is undeterred. not deterred by
such horror stories. Although she became a prostitute before she became
a travesti, she is very clear about why she wants the silicone: 'To be
more beautiful and to get more money. If I have silicone I can charge
more than I do now. And then I will go to Italy and get even more money
and become European . . .'This is a familiar refrain. Every
travesti wants to go to Italy, where the money is. As one of them told
a recent BBC South documentary, The Boys from Brazil, ' they like
Brazilian travestis. ,' says Marcela, interviewed in a TV documentary
called The Boys from Brazil a years ago. 'They like to see a woman's
body. They like to see a feminine face . . . but in bed what they like
is to be the woman. They want a boy-girl, a woman that's got a cock to
give them. And they'll pay you the world in order to get this . . .'THE DOCTORDr
Puga is a plastic surgeon who specialises in prosthetics, although he
is often called upon to try to neutralise damage inflicted through
silicone injected by amateurs. Dr Puga inserts silicone only in the
form of sealed gel prostheses, which can be applied to the mammary
region, the gluteal region (backside), the nose and the cheekbones.
Prosthesis is not available for the hip region. He no longer injects
liquid silicone.'Liquid silicone, used by doctors, is not
illegal, but it is unethical,' he says. 'In the USA its use is only
permitted in cases where a child is born with facial atrophy, in order
to reduce the deformity. Apart from that, its use is not permitted
because of the great risks involved.'Some people can take quite
a lot, without problems, but others suffer reactions such as a
hardening of the tissue and also a fibrosis? (development of excessive
fibrous tissue) in the dermis the deepest part of the skin. The skin
becomes like orange peel hardened and with open pores.'There are
many common misconceptions shared by are common among travestis, he
explains, the first being that if the treatment goes wrong, the
silicone can be dissolved with an injection of Decadron ('In fact it
merely helps to reduce the swelling'). Another is that the silicone can
be removed with liposuction. Liposuction can remove only recently
injected silicone (up to a week after application) which is still
liquid; even then it is impossible to remove it all.Once the
silicone has hardened into a thick gel, it can only be removed by
surgery, which will scar. 'If it's a localised fibrosis, you can remove
it, but if you have fibrosis of the whole thigh, for example, how can
you remove that?' Even in cases where a prosthetic is used, the most
common reaction is a fibrolytic reaction where in which the body
creates a capsule around the prosthesis, much like scar tissue. This
has to be manually manipulated in order to break down the tissue.The
travestis constantly refer to silicone as either 'industrial' or
'medical' often blaming a bad reaction on the fact that industrial
silicone was used instead of medical.But In reality, says Dr
Puga, there is no such thing as 'medical' silicone, because all liquid
silicone is meantmanufactured?? for industrial use. The only thing that
is Silicone is 'medical' about silicone is only when it comes as a gel,
pre-moulded in a capsule. The capsule prevents the silicone from
spreading inside the body, limiting adverse reactions to it.But
there is a degree of purity involved, and None the less, an impure
silicone will obviously exacerbate a bad reaction. 'If a person has an
allergy to silicone, any quantity can cause a reaction; but it also
depends on the purity of the silicone used. Other problems arise when
the patients don't doesn't rest after the operation, or if they overdo
the quantity, (although exactly how much silicone each person can stand
is relative to will depend on their size, weight and tolerance), or
from have an allergy to silicone (which can cause death through
anaphylactic shock or respiratory shock). With When inexperienced
bombadeiras are involved, another common cause of death is thrombosis
caused by silicone entering the bloodstream. and causing
cardio-pulmonary problems.There is a great deal of risk involved
in being a bombadeira, because of the illegality. but not a lot of
skill. 'It's easy,' says Dr Puga. 'Anyone who knows how to give an
injection will know how to apply silicone subcutaneously.'THE PATIENTOne
of Dr Puga's patients is Nana Vogue, 44 years old. Dr Puga has removed
silicone from her nose, stomach and legs. Nana has been a
'professional' travesti (ie, performing in shows) since 1969,
travelling frequently to Europe, and occasionally performing in Brazil.
She was also a make-up artist for 15 years.Nana lives in a
Hello]-style apartment in downtown Sao Paulo. She poses happily for
photos, draping herself around the pillars and columns of her home.
Dolls dressed in national costumes and Barbies of different hues fill
the shelves; pink floral wallpaper adorns her bedroom; the bed, with
its fake antique bedhead, has an oriental salmon pink bedspread with a
matching Japanese fan on the wall.Nana emerges from this sugary
treasure box in a diaphanous white chiffon ensemble, worn over a
rose-sculptured white satin bra from which her ample breasts emerge. Up
close, her face is a mess. It is taut from face-lifts, and lumpy around
the cheekbones from misplaced silicone. She is effusive and friendly,
merrily contradicting herself and evading direct questions.
Impersonating Marilyn Monroe was one of her specialities, and she is
happy to perform, miming to the voice of Marilyn singing 'Happy
Birthday, Mr President'., then 'Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend'. Her
movements are quite convincing, but she still it has to be said that
she looks more like the president than Marilyn Monroe.Nana
always felt there was a woman trapped inside her man's body, and in her
late teens she entered a Miss Brazil contest for transvestites. , and
her late teens. . . . 'It presumably she must have felt a bit
woman-trapped-inside-a-woman's-body-ish about it in order to enter the
contest with the Miss Brazil contest (for transvestites).' I came
second. After that I wanted to be a woman I thought it suited me.' At
thethat time (pre-silicone) she was wearing foam to pad out her body,
and relations with her family became strained as a result. Her father
would occasionally beat her, and send sent her to a psychologist, who
prescribed male hormones to counteract the her feminine side and
resolve the conflict. This didn't work, and in 1976 she saw a second
psychologist who helped her to come to terms with her femininity. She
soonwearing foam to pad out her body, and relations with her family
became strained as a result. Her father would occasionally beat her,
and send sent her to a psychologist, who prescribed male hormones to
counteract the her feminine side and resolve the conflict. This didn't
work, and in 1976 she saw a second psychologist who helped her to come
to terms with her femininity. She soon began to have electrolysis and
to take female hormones, which made her grow breasts. In those days,
silicone was not available in Brazil, only in Paris. The treatments
were administered by two travestis called Claudia and Eliza. Eliza
(Nana's friend) was a pimp with two streets of prostitutes under her
control, many of them Brazilian. She would 'import' them from Brazil
and give them silicone treatment, and they would pay her back (with
considerable interest) by working for her. According to Nana, Eliza was
murdered by Claudia in 1980 in a power struggle for control of the
'silicone mafia'. Claudia was put in jail.Then, in the early
'80s, Eighties, Nana became the second person one of the first people
in Brazil to undergo silicone treatment (before that, the treatment was
available only in Paris). She was 'treated' by Suzy Bolinha (a
bombadeira), who gave her two cupfuls of silicone (half a pint in each
thigh) at a cost of pounds 200. She now has a total of three litres in
her body, applied in liquid form by both doctors and bombadeiras. 'Dr
Puga used to give it to me, but as he only had low-quality silicone he
just applied small quantities, in order to sculpt and model, and carry
out repair work.'These days Nana suffers from spinal pain,
thickened skin, swelling in her legs, circulation problems and
permanent bruising. She has had several operations to remove silicone
from her body, including liposuction, 'but the main problem is that the
suction tube becomes blocked easily.'To be a good travesti, says Nana with conviction, is to be able to hide the ugly and show what is beautiful.THE SHOWGIRLIt
is carnival time in Rio, a major date on the travesti calendar. The
Copacabana beach, daytime regrouping point after the night's
debauchery, is plastered with mahogany-coloured bodies who which are in
turn plastered with oil, undeterred by the threat of the strong
Brazilian sun and the 42-degree heat. G-strings are very popular, and
clothing of any sort attracts attention, as does white skin. What
doesn't seem to attract any attention at all is the sight of a group of
shrieking men with long hair, make-up and 44in breasts.At a
glance, you might think they were girls. Close up, their true gender is
more apparent. Though many have soft, hairless skin on their faces,
others have light stubble. Their breasts are often oddly shaped, the
nipples enormous or pointing in different directions, as if cross-eyed.
Their voices are deep, and there is a suggestion of an Adam's apple
here and there, or a slight bulge in their skimpy bikini knickers.
'You're not photographing me with my meat skirt,' chirrups one, shoving
her hand in her costume to re-arrange herself. It looks painful, all
this concealing, but constant use of hormones has the effect of
shrinking shrinks the penis.On the whole, though, it is a
convincing show. Dressed in matching tops and briefs, stretchy
fluorescent costumes and Versace-esque prints, they flounce and pout as
soon as a camera appears, posing relentlessly in a grotesque apeing of
a supermodel beach shoot,. and When the photographer suggests that they
'act natural', they fall about laughing. Only the more seriously
scarred and lumpy ones hang back.Juliana is relaxing on a beach
chair. She is beautiful, with soft girlish features, but there is a
masculine edge to her. She is languidly abrasive. Originally from
Brazil, she spends a lot of time in Italy and Switzerland, where she is
famous, performing performs in and choreographings a show with 14
dancers and 15 travestis.Juliana takes hormones, Androcur in
particular (a female hormone sometimes used on sex offenders to dampen
their sex drive) in particular. In her breasts she has gel prosthetics,
which she had inserted two years ago at a cost of pounds 1,300; she has
also had silicone injected into her hips. The silicone, she says, has
given her no trouble. She has had, she claims, no trouble arising from
the silicone. She came to London once, with the intention of having the
a complete sex change operation, but changed her mind. 'You have to be
really sure, because it's something you cannot undo. It was my dream to
become a woman, but I wasn't born a woman and I'm successful the way I
am. If I died tomorrow I would die happy, because this is the life I
wanted to live.'Juliana's is a success story. From a small town
She arrived in Sao Paulo in 1988 from a small town, where she became a
prostitute, and after four years she had managed to buy a car, a house
for her mother and an apartment for herself. 'A female prostitute would
never be able to earn that much; they have pimps taking it all. And
they always have this dream that one day they will meet a man who will
marry them and take care of them, but travestis don't think like that.
We know that we have only one time of beauty; when we reach the age of
30 to 40 we have to retire, so we work really hard to earn as much
money as we can.'I know beautiful travestis who got stuck with a
man instead of working. Now they're old and ugly and don't have
anything. It's only after you've made it that you can start looking for
a man. A woman can give a child to a man, but we can only give the
illusion of beauty. A real man would never stay with a travesti for the
rest of his life. Travestis are destined to be lonely.'THE CHOREOGRAPHERDowntown
Sao Paulo is swarming with night-clubs; night-clubs which seem
unusually dated from the outside, with neon signs proclaiming names
like such as My Love, Erotic Inn and Love Story. At one of these, Le
Masque, is based the oldest and most famous travesti show in Brazil.
The troupe is called Les Girls, and it was founded by Nadia Kendal in
1962. All of Brazil's best travestis, she says, have worked in this
group at one time or another. Nadia is the choreographer, ; she directs
directing four to five shows every night at different clubs, seven days
a week.Nadia used to be a travesti but now looks more like an
old, very butch lesbian. She is, perhaps, 54. She is skinny with short
hair, her balding head concealed beneath a baseball cap. There is
something rather beautiful about her, and something very sad. and
wistful.Nadia attributes the roots of Brazil's popular
transvestite culture to the carnival heritage, where it has always been
quite acceptable for straight men to dress up as women. From there, she
says, it went on to become a staple aspect of homosexual behaviour. cut
this para? then start next one: Before the days of silicone, she says,
the shows were very different.In the beginning, pre-silicone,
Before the days of silicone, she says, the shows were very different.
The performers would arrive as men, then transform themselves into a
woman women on stage, then change and go home. Then, in the '70s
Seventies, they stayed dressed up all the time. In the Nineties, she
says, prostitution has increased and no one wants to see the shows any
more. 'Transvestites were considered artists in the early days, but now
everything has got more decadent.'Nadia will not allow the girls
in her show to use silicone; hormones, she says, make you quite
feminine enough. She had silicone injected into her cheeks in 1972; she
couldn't resist it, because everyone else was doing it. After the
operation she fell asleep on her left side, and all the silicone
gathered in a lump under her eye. She couldn't have surgery because
it's was too close to the eye; she has learnt to live with it.It
used to be more of a fad than it is now, is less of a fad than it was,
says Nadia. 'A lot of my friends died from it. It went to their
hearts.' She doesn't dress up any more, doesn't even have a yearning
for it. 'But I don't regret my time as a travesti; that was when I
found myself; it was, good for me.'THE DANCERPhaedra is
elegant, a faded beauty.; she looks like Anna Magnani. She comes from
Cuba, and used to be was a ballerina??this means a woman ballet dancer
before assuming her she assumed her 'real identity'. Now she lives 24
hours a day as a woman. 'I killed the male ballerina.' Her cousin (also
a ballerina) brought her to Brazil in 1958. She arrived in Brazil in
1958 in the middle of carnival and couldn't believe her eyes. In 1965
she started taking hormones, and for a time her gender was a bit
confused. 'I didn't dress as a woman at the time, so I looked like a
cross between a mermaid and a shark.' In the early days she was famous
because no one knew if she was a man or a woman. She was known as the
'Cuban Doubt' publicity photos of her had a question mark on them. Five
years ago, she had silicone put in her breasts. 'I didn't feel I needed
it before. All the women in my family are very young-looking.' She is
proud of her 'natural femininity', and obviously feels superior; she is
quite snobbish about those who need silicone in order to assert their
feminine qualities.Despite the fact that she feels 'all woman',
Phaedra still has a penis. She says, with pride, that it's easy to hide
because it's so small. In an ironic swipe at today's sexuality, the
smaller the dick, the prouder the travesti. Phaedra, too, She has
thought about having it removed, but the early operations were about
converting men into eunuchs and not providing them with anything else.
She says she has friends who have had the operation who claim to be
happy, but she doesn't believe them. 'Travestis never tell the truth,
so who knows?'She credits the over-abuse of silicone with to the
fact that many travestis naturally have a very masculine physiognomy,
and in order to counteract it they overdo it. 'It's like a fever,' she
says. 'They fill themselves up with silicone to make money; it just
became so easy and so cheap.' She compares silicone use to HIV. 'It's
the luck of the draw - sometimes you get sick and sometimes you don't'She
acknowledges that prostitution is the main motivation for silicone
abuse. 'But it's the fault of a hypocritical bourgeois male society
that they cannot admit their bisexuality.' If a man wants to go with
another man, says Phaedra, it makes him feel much better that he's
going with a travesti.She regrets that the travesti culture has
come increasingly associated with marginais and less and less with
artistes. The scene has changed. 'Bichas ('fags') have become really
mean and small-minded over the years, stretched by poverty. They feel
like they've been cheated, so they've ceased to care. and they live
their lives without morals. They've lost their self-respect.'I
don't think it matters the way you were born. You can be born a man or
a woman or you can be born like us. It's what you do with your life
that matters. When I left home, my father said, 'Whatever you do with
your life, do it with dignity'. And in this life I have really tried
hard to be dignified. I'm not going to don't deny that I was a
prostitute, but even that I did with dignity.'THERE IS no word
for travesti in Britain; over here; there is no need for one. But in
Brazil, medical science has empowered the travesti to define her its
own identity, and the travesti has, in turn, evolved into a species: a
manufactured hermaphrodite of sorts, an aching parody of a woman with a
masculine core. 'I was born to be a travesti, I wasn't born a boy or a
girl,' says Luciana, who started taking hormones at the age of nine. 'A
travesti is neither a man or a woman. Everyone knows what we are.'Beauty,
as Stendhal maintained, is nothing more than the promise of happiness.
But it is also a powerful motivating force, and in Brazil the pursuit
of beauty has assumed fatal consequences. One travesti said that in her
house she only has mirrors which reflect from the waist up. 'It
protects my illusion.' It is an illusion with a high price.Additional research byt Viviane Carneiro. Additional translation by Zeca Catao and Jonathan Roberts(Photograph omitted)