Born a Man, Christine Jorgensen Had an Early Sex Change

Now middle aged, she’s considering a face lift

The Washington Star-News, August 7, 1973: “I am Christine Jorgensen. I always should have been Christine Jorgensen. I always will be Christine Jorgensen,” says the former George William Jorgensen who was born a male 47 years ago.

It’s been 20 years since Miss Jorgensen underwent one of the first sex operations which converted her with much fanfare into a woman (“Ex GI Becomes Blonde Beauty” read the headlines on the front page of the New York Daily News, Dec. 1, 1952). Now she’s a bosomy matron worried about her looks.

In fact, she’s thinking of having another operation — a face lift. Meanwhile, she instructs the photographer, “No pictures with daylight. Full face and with a flash only. I am, my dear man, 47 years old and I don’t want to look 47 years old.”

After years as an entertainer in nightclubs, she’s started a new career, as a lecturer, and she’s in town this week for a convention of the International Platform Association. Later, being interviewed in broad sunlight in front of the Sheraton-Park swimming pool by WMAL-TV (“Oh! That zoom lens, my pores are going to pop out!’’), she catches the newspaper photographer grabbing a few more shots. She’s more relaxed by now and protests cheerfully, “Too many profiles, pussycat. You’re one of those naughty ones.”

Miss Jorgensen, who speaks in a low, throaty voice, goes in for large gold costume jewelry and paints her fingers and toenails bright red, explains that she is transsexual, which she differentiates from a homosexual and a transvestite.

“The homosexual has a dream interest or a real interest in people of his own sex and would never consider surgery. He likes his sex life the way it is. A transvestite is a person with a reasonably well-defined sex who wants to wear clothing of the opposite sex. It’s not a sexual thing, it’s behavioral.””

As for transsexuality, Miss Jorgensen explains it in terms of everyone having both male and female characteristics, with the average person having a preponderance of those of his or her own sex.

“But I was about so-so, well on my way to going to the opposite sex.” The operations (there were several over a two-year period, “created openings and a Vaginal passage. Her bosom comes from hormones, the same kind they give to women who have a hysterectomy”), which she will take as long as she lives.

The operation didn’t include the transplant of a uterus and ovaries (“I think in the future there will be transplants too”), so obviously she will not be able to have children. But “I have my share of male admirers,” she says.

To what is a stock question — “What about marriage” — she has a stock answer. She says — and said four times yesterday afternoon, each time to a different reporter — “I’ve been engaged two times and I’ve been in love two times, but I wasn’t in love with the men I was engaged to and I wasn’t engaged to the man I was in love with.”

Miss Jorgensen is accompanied by a young man,“ ”an old friend,” from Newark, N.J., Larry Heller, a psychotherapist who treats male schizophrenics at Essex County Hospital Center. “I needed an escort for a few parties, so I called Larry.” explains Miss Jorgensen, who shares a house in Laguna Beach, Calif, with a woman friend, a widow.

Heller takes her phone calls, carries her handbag when she is on camera and helps out with scientific explanations. Miss Jorgensen is not a homosexual, she says. “Homosexuality was ‘ego alien’ to me,” she says, using Heller’s term. “But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

Some men are even afraid of Miss Jorgensen. “But that’s because they have identity problems of their own. Some men don’t want to be seen with me because they think it reflects on their own masculinity.”

For those who think they may be transsexual, she suggests going to a “gender identity clinic.” Miss Jorgensen had to go to Copenhagen for her transsexual operations because none were being performed in the United States 20 years ago. “Now it’s being done in 50 hospitals nationwide.”

She freely admits that the notoriety attending her operation has brought her an exciting and lucrative life. She’s about to resume her show business career (which ceased in 1966) by doing a production with another old friend, Milton Berle, in Las Vegas. She’s updated her autobiography, supervised a movie on her life (1969) and, in the past year and a half, spoken to 12,000 students on college campuses.

Miss Jorgensen has few remnants of her male past: her Army Dog Tags, which she has had gold-plated “because Dog-Tags are in style now” and her $10,000 GI Insurance policy. She has no regrets, nor does she mind being an oddity.

“If I were not me, I would be very curious about me.”

Original Title: Christine Still Enjoys Being a Girl