Transgender Living

I received a pretty cool email today from a casting person from the TLC series, "What Not To Wear".  They're looking for transwomen between 25 and 50 who have been transitioned full time for 2 years... but I'll let the email speak for itself.

Hi Grishno,

My name is Martin and I am the casting director for the makeover television show What Not To Wear on TLC. In case you aren't familiar, each episode our host Stacy London and Clinton Kelly surprise one deserving woman with a makeover worth $5,000. It continues to prove to be a great transformational experience for all of our candidates.

I am contacting you because I am looking to help in spreading awareness and feature a transgender woman on the show this season. I was hoping you might be able to help me out. The ideal candidate should be transgender (male to female) who has been living her life solely as a woman for at least 2 years but is still struggling to find a style that is suitable to her new body. She should be between the ages of 25-50, living in the New York City area. Normally the makeover is a surprise for all of our candidates, however considering the sensitive nature with this topic it is okay if the candidate knows they are being considered for a makeover. Also, I want to make it clear that we would not be trying to offend anyone in any way. Instead we are hoping to highlight the community and show that they are indeed a part of fashion just like any other woman.

I am not sure if this is something you would be interested in yourself but maybe you know of someone? I would love to talk to you more about this. Hopefully we can speak sometime this week. Please feel free to give me a call or respond back with the best way to reach you.

I apologize for contacting you through youtube but I couldn't find an appropriate email contact for your. Thanks for your time and I look forward to speaking with you!

Best,

Martin Hardy
CASTING DIRECTOR
WHAT NOT TO WEAR | BBC Worldwide
212.254.2629 ext. 26
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

As you've probably noticed by now, the site looks a little different.  Things were getting a bit crowded in the chat and forums with menus on both the left and right side of the screen so I've decided to try out a one menu model for the site.  Things may be moving around for the next few days while I continue to try and make everything fit into the new design.  Feel free to leave me a comment on this article about what you think of the new site design.

I'm also working on trying to focus a bit more on the forums and chat, and less on blog-style posts.  If you have suggestions about the forums or chat please post them here so that I can try and make those features better.

I just found and watched several of your video's!  You are amazing and thank you for taking the time to share with others.  I am the parent of a FTM and wish with all my heart I could start over - I love my son very much and want to restore our relationship.

My FTM child is 33 years old --- came out at 17 as a lesbian and has been transitioning since graduation from college @ age 20.  He is  now living a very full and successful life as a man and I am very proud to call him my son.  We have been very close forever --- struggled during the initial 'shock' but worked through it --- or so I thought we had.  This is where the situation begins!

I am in what I believe to be a strange situation and would appreciate talking to someone.  In fact, my relationship with my child is conditional upon me speaking to someone.  I know that is a strange way to start communication with you - I was blown away too. 

He has now expressed how angry he is about our acceptance/non-acceptance/slow acceptance of his coming out.  I have not seen him since December and only talked to him once since then.  He will not answer my calls - and has said that he doesn't want to see me until I can fully understand and relay to him the pain that I caused him. 

I am at a loss as to how I can do that to his satisfaction --- If only I had been what he needed during that very difficult time.  I know I'm asking alot of you since you don't know me or my son or our life together ---- but any advice would be very much appreciated.  I would do anything to be back in his life.

Thank you for your time and I wish the best to you & Morgan.

Read my response after the break:

Yet another new article has popped up from Montana about the DOR events that happened there last week.  This one had a photo of the beautiful candlelight vigil that was held that night.  Can you spot the grishno?

The article talks more in depths about the panel discussion, and goes into some detail about one of the, at least for me, most touching moments of the entire trip.  During my presentation on the panel I'd talked about growing up in a Mormon family and later moving to NYC.  I talked about how I was feeling disconnected from the Transgender community and so decided to make a video talking about being transgender on youtube.  That was the humble beginning of the "WORLD FAMOUS GRISHNO" you see before your today.

Later in the panel Bree, the Executive Director of Montana DOR and the person responsible for getting me out to Montana in the first place, talked about her experiences of struggling with her gender.  Originally she'd though, like many of us do, that she must have been a gay male... ends up that wasn't quite the case.  During the discovery process of finding out that she was actually a Transgender woman, she did a youtube search and came across videos of Transgender people talking about who they are and why they live the way they do.  Those videos that she came across were my videos.

It was incredible.  This person who had done so so much for the Transgender community in this small Montanan town had somehow been influenced by me.  And now here we both were, speaking on a panel about Transgender issues together.  It's hard to describe in words exactly how touched I was by this experience.  It's one thing to get a letter from someone thanking you for helping them out, but it's an entirely different thing to be told it face to face in front of dozens of people.

It really hit home the feeling that I was continuing a great work.  I stand on the shoulders of giants, of those Transgender pioneers who came before me, and now people are standing on my shoulders.  We, as a community, are making such amazing progress, but we're doing it in a vacuum.  And that's why all of this matters.

The full article can be found HERE.