Do you recall the episode of House entitled “Skin Deep”? In it, and I’m going to have to spoil it for you if you’ve never seen it, a teenage supermodel faces complications that appear to stem from heroin withdrawal. After a typically dramatic trial-and-error treatment attempt, Dr. House discovers the cause of the model’s problems: pseudohermaphroditism. It turns out she has both male and female genitalia, however her male genitalia (testes) are located inside her body and have developed a tumor. House takes a lot of its cases from mainstream medical phenomena. At the time of the episode, studies had been released that suggested that a significant (stats speak here, meaning p = .05) percentage of the world’s supermodels were genetic anomalies due to pseudohermaphroditism (also known as androgen insensitivity syndrome, or AIS).
Jena Pincott wrote an article on her blog entitled When the Perfect Woman is Genetically Male. She sums up the cause of the syndrome very well:
This gorgeous college student had complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. Women with this condition — approximately 1 in 20,000 — tend to be exceptionally tall and striking in appearance. AIS is caused by a recessive variant of the gene that codes for Androgen Receptor. Because the body is insensitive to the androgen testosterone, the usual male features — penis, testes, scrotum, etc. — are unable to develop. The default phenotype is female, so people with AIS have a vagina or “vaginal pouch” (although most AIS women require surgical expansion). If a woman with AIS were to get a blood test, her testosterone levels would be as high as any man’s, but her body can’t process the hormone. That’s why women with complete AIS are so feminine — arguably more so than other women. (Some people with AIS have only partial androgen insensitivity. Considered intersex, or hermaphrodites, they fall all along the spectrum between typically male and female and have a micropenis. Naturally, there’s much controversy about gender assignment at birth and estrogen or testosterone injections at puberty.)
In Jared Diamond’s book, “Why is Sex Fun?” he describes these women as such: “[A] pseudohermaphrodite looks like a normal woman. Indeed ‘she’ conforms to the male ideal of female pulchritude even more closely than does the average woman” (page 43). It makes sense that supermodels have a higher percentage of this syndrome than the rest of the population. They are supposed to represent an ideal, and pseudohermaphroditism actually causes women to conform more to this ideal.
To put it more succinctly, “The former type looks like a normal woman. Indeed, she often conforms to the male ideal of feminine beauty even more than the average woman does because her breasts tend to be well developed and her legs long and graceful. Her complexion is usually flawless and she tends to have the added height of a man. Hence, cases have turned up repeatedly among female fashion models.” (Turning a Man, Discover Magazine).
It’s almost counterintuitive to think that a woman with male characteristics could more closely approximate the “male ideal” of how a woman should look. I guess it really is a man’s world.
This brings me to the topic of Lea T (Seriously NSFW LINK!). Lea T is the world’s first openly transsexual model, and she is landing big modeling campaigns. Lea T does not suffer from pseudohermaphroditism (or AIS). She was born male, and has been taking hormones to become a woman, but has yet to undergo gender-reassignment surgery. She is beautiful and striking, and according to The Guardian, lonely.
(Lea T is the second from the right).
What ties this together for me is the thought that these women with the look that the fashion industry wants – that designers want in their clothes – are not fully women (I’m only talking in the biological sense). This concept is rather fascinating to me. I think Lea T is absolutely amazing and incredibly brave. I am glad that she has been embraced by the industry. This passage in The Guardian article really struck a chord with me, “Despite all this, she says, the ‘war in her head’ has been worth fighting. ‘The choice,’ she said in an interview in Italian Vanity Fair,’is between being unhappy forever or trying to be happy.’” I understand what she means. In this world, you do what you can to try to be happy, even in the face of insurmountable odds, societal scorn, familial dissonance, and criticism.
Does it bother me that the Ideal being marketed by mainstream fashion more accurately represents masculine traits than feminine ones? Yes, but there is a lot about the fashion industry that bothers me (like it’s inherent racism, it’s treatment toward the overweight, it’s out-of-touch snobbery, it’s refusal to change the skinniness-is-next-to-godliness mentality). There is so much corruption and backwards thinking in the fashion industry that it’s hard to know where to begin; which battle to fight. I am sure it raises the ire of some women when they realize that some of the supermodels strutting down the runway are genetically gifted (or cursed??) with AIS, or who are openly transsexual (and therefore have the masculine advantage of height, faster metabolism, etc.). But, let’s not decry these women. Let’s not demand more “real women” representation. They are real women. This is a battle I’m willing to fight, and I’m going out on a limb here when I say that I firmly believe that gender is a mental attitude more than a biological assignment. I also believe that sexuality is fluid, and that when Nature battles Nurture in a fight to the death, that Nurture is going to have the slightest edge.
If you were raised a woman, or if you identify yourself as a woman, I’m saying that’s all the criteria I need to believe you are a woman. I know that many would disagree with me. “Having a penis means you’re male, having a vagina means you’re female!” they might say. But what of those born with both sets (hermaphroditism), or when part of their genitalia is internal (pseudohermaphroditism)? What if you’re a guy with micropenis? Or a woman with an over-sized clitoris? Do these deviations from the norm speak to your gender identity? What if you were born one gender and desperately want to switch to another so that you can be at peace with yourself for the first time? What if your doctor missed the telltale signs at your birth and your parents unwittingly raised you as a female, even though you had male genitalia, like the main character in Middlesex? What if you’re someone like Gemma Ward that has something that’s nearly the opposite of AIS called trisomy? What if you’re like Hedwig and your sex change operation got botched, and all you’re left with is an angry inch? What are you then? A male or a female?
See, not such a black-and-white issue. That’s why I think it’s a personal matter. It’s up to you to define your own gender and sexuality. As for Lea T, I am excited that she’s around. Any form of diversity in the fashion world is important to me. Lea has been quoted as saying, “I agreed to pose in the name of all my transsexual friends.” Instead of being held up as an industry poster child for the unusual, she has become a symbol – a brave face representing the transsexual multitudes.
