29/08/08

Only in New York.

Jamie Clayton, by James Morgan

Jamie Clayton, by James Morgan

The New York Observer has crowned Jamie Clayton the second most beautiful woman in New York. (It doesn’t tell us who the most beautiful woman is.) The always engaging Broadsheet deems this a triumph for transgenders, since Jamie was born a boy.

Quite understandably, Jamie relates her “education sentimenale” to her past with a penis.

She’s noticed a funny thing since making her transformation. Because of her looks—she calls herself a “top-shelf” transsexual—she gets hit on by all sorts, not just tranny-chasers.

She has a type—she likes confident, sexy, creative guys. But she’s found that these men, more so even than the men she dated pre-op, are frequently unable to live up to the swaggering open-mindedness they claim to possess.

“If I have a connection with someone, I’d like to think that they’d be able to respect that connection enough and respect themselves enough to not care about my past—that they would want to see what happens between us,” she said. “But I have had plenty of instances where guys don’t even give it a chance, or maybe they do give it a bit of a chance, and then they sort of drop off the face of the earth because it freaks them out.”

I would humbly submit that Jamie’s transition has been far more successful than perhaps she recognises. Let’s run that again, without the references to her anatomical history:

Because of her looks, she gets hit on by all sorts.

She has a type—she likes confident, sexy, creative guys. But she’s found that these men are frequently unable to live up to the swaggering open-mindedness they claim to possess.

“If I have a connection with someone, I’d like to think that they’d be able to respect that connection enough and respect themselves enough to not care about my past—that they would want to see what happens between us,” she said. “But I have had plenty of instances where guys don’t even give it a chance, or maybe they do give it a bit of a chance, and then they sort of drop off the face of the earth.”

Doesn’t that read like a universal lament of single women in New York City, regardless of what our pasts conceal?

This post was published on 29/08/08 in Men, women and others.

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