Aleshia Brevard 

Stage, Film and TV Actress

Transsexual Pioneer
SRS in 1962 at age 24
(read her amazing story)
(more photos)

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The author of The Woman I Was Not Born To Be

discusses sex, marriage, gender reassignment, and being a
grand old dame.
Q: What do you think
your greatest
achievement as a
woman, specifically a
transsexual has been?

A: Well, Honey, it
certainly wouldn't be
parading around as a
Playboy bunny—or
even working in film
and television,
although I loved that.
I do think I've done
some very important
work as a teacher,
but my greatest
achievement as a
woman has to be
coming to grips with
my place in society.
That can be a difficult
task even for genetic
women. Society sends
mixed messages
about what it means
to be a woman.

Q: Do you see
yourself a transsexual
pioneer?
A: Oh, Mercy!
Thinking of myself as
a pioneer conjures up
images of me wearing
a coon skin cap. I am
from Tennessee, like
Davy Crockett, but I
would hope that's
where the
resemblance ends. I
merely see myself as
a woman who, in
order to live as one,
had to go to some
fairly extreme © Loren Cameron
measures.
Reviews
Q: So speaking in
terms of self- "Brevard's story adds an entertaining curve to the growing body
of literature—academic scientific, theoretical and literary—on
identification and transgendered experience, without the self-pity or sentimentality
personal success, how found in many such memoirs....Written in a gossipy style
reminiscent of 1950's movie-star autobiographies (which at heart,
do you view your role it is)."
in society?
A: My role is no —Publishers Weekly
different from the role
of any good citizen. I "Aleshia Brevard's transformation from an awkward
strive to be the best , southern boy to Hollywood B-movie starlet is one of the
most productive most amazing tales I've ever read. It's filled with
madcap adventures, sexual escapades, hart-breaking
person that I can be.
pain, great loves and great losses. This is a beautiful
I am not especially book, written with a glittering charm and humor and
ambitious, but that wisdom."
probably has nothing —Jonathan Ames, Author of The Extra Man
to do with gender.
No, I see transsexual
surgery as a medical
solution to a birth
defect. It's not a
reason for self-
aggrandizement nor
does it offer the
transgendered a
segregated role in
society. My personal
goal is grow into just
another grand-old-
dame.
"Alfred 'Buddy' Crenshaw hailed from rural Tennessee and
Q: Can you give some eventually worked in San Francisco's famous nightclub
marital advice to Finocchio's as drag diva Lee Shaw. … He was a smash but found
life schizoid because the 'real' world demanded that he dress and
women who are in act as a man. Wanting to be accepted as a woman at all times, he
bad, or seemingly resorted to self-castration in the early days of transgender
surgery. Finally, after hormone therapy, he underwent the
difficult situations surgical sexual reassignment that allowed him to become Aleshia
such as you were? Brevard, the buxom b-movie actress he had presumably always
A: With hindsight, felt he was."
which is always —Whitney Scott for Booklist, 15 February 2001

20/20, I can see that

a lot of my marital "Aleshia's reflective nature delves deep into the heart
of what it means to be gender dysphori; whether
problems were of my
exploring that grey area between drag and
own making. I was transsexuality, the angst over whether or not to
not being honest, disclose one's past to new acquaintances, or the daily
even with myself. I obstacles of suddenly becoming, what was at the time,
was trying to be the the second class gender. Her memoir nicely documents
woman my mate the world of pre-Stonewall drag and transformation, as
well as the early reassignment surgery and their painful
wanted me to be. By
procedures including primitive dilators and self-
trying to live up to castrations (it was illegal for doctors to remove
someone else's testicles). But Aleshia maintains her ever healthy,
fantasy, I lost myself. punditty perspective throughout:
I know a lot of
married women who 'As the doctor packed and repacked my new vagina,
are still making that they crammed enough cotton padding inside me to
sad mistake. resurrect the plantation system in at least two Delta
states! The Old south might rise again, but I never
world.'"
Q: Are people
shocked when they —Aaron Jason for Lambda Book Report, February 2001
learn the "truth"
about you?
A: Telling the truth
about my past is still
a new experience for
me. Coming out was
not an easy decision,
you know. My ego is
still so strong that I'd
be hurt if strangers
did not react with
shock when they
learned the "truth" of
my gender history.
Even at 63, old
enough to know
better, I still want to
be a femme fatal.

Q: If you had such

success as a drag
queen/female
impersonator, why did
you make the decision
to have surgery?
A: Because I felt
incomplete as a man.
I always believed that
I was a woman—it
was just a matter of
making that a reality.

Q: Sexual
reassignment is still a
very controversial
issue in this country.
How do you think
attitudes have
changed-for better or
for worse-since your
operation?
A: Attitudes have
indeed changed since
my sexual
reassignment-they've
gotten worse. In the
beginning (excuse me
if I sound biblical)
there were so few of
us that we created
very little hoopla.
Generally speaking,
people were not
threatened. Curious
maybe, but not
threatened. We were
simply a few ultra
feminine individuals,
labeled male at birth,
who fervently desired
to live our lives at the
women we knew
ourselves to be. As
we graciously slipped
into society, we didn't
make waves. That has
changed. I think that
is largely because the
media spotlight has
focused on an angry,
in-your-face, crass
transsexual fringe. I
find that sad fact
disheartening.

Q: Do you ever miss

being a man?
A: How can I miss
something I never
realized I had? That's
intended to be
interpreted in the
broadest sense, you
must understand. I
never thought of
myself as a man.
From my side of the
fence, it takes more
than a penis to be a
man. Do I miss a
penis? Only on cold,
lonely nights.

Q: What is sex like as

a transsexual?
A: How badly do you
want to know?

Q: What does the

future hold for
Aleshia?
A: Do you mean other
than being universally
loved and adored?
Ha! —wouldn't that be
nice? Actually, I don't
know where my next
 steps will lead. I
never have known.
Any success I might
have found as a
woman, or as a
transsexual, if you
prefer, comes from
getting up each
morning, putting one
well shod foot in front
of the other, and
getting on with life. It
just so happened that
my shoes had to be
stilettos. I believe
we're put on a path at
the very beginning of
our journey. When we
stray too far to the
left or to the right-the
universe slaps us
back to where we are
supposed to be.

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© 2001 Temple University. All Rights Reserved. Dawn Danish, Webmaster

Final del
formulario

Trans Mission To advertise in

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by Michael Musto Christa Dwyer.
 April 27th, 2001 4:30 PM
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Brevard’s head shot after her ’62

surgery
(photo courtesy of Temple University
Press)
The Woman I Was Not Born to
Be: A Transsexual Journey
By Aleshia Brevard
Temple University Press, 249 pp.,
$24.95
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Little Me) crossed with a real-life
version of a dime-store novel ("I
drove toward home, watching in the
rearview mirror as Hank Foyle faded
away"). Throughout, Brevard gives
unexpected depth to the diva dish by
lacing it with serious discourse about
the restraining roles society makes us
play and an intelligent grasp of queer,
transsexual, and feminist history.

Your jaw drops when you read

the sexy, outrageous details of
Brevard's life on the edge,
made all the more gripping
when she puts her story in its
larger context. Brevard, now
63, was an effeminate rural
Tennessee boy named Alfred
who couldn't wait to toss off all
male accoutrements and
convince the rest of the world of
her womanhood. With the help
of a friend, Brevard castrated
herself because back in the
'50s, you couldn't get that kind
of service in an American clinic.
As she writes, "Stormy made
the initial cut, saw blood, and
went outside to throw up. In
mid-operation, I was left alone
on a kitchen table draped with
Lysol-scented sheets. I sat up
and finished my own
castration."

In '62, she completed her

crossover via surgery and got
herself a vagina—" 'Good God!'
I shrieked. 'This looks like
something you'd hang in your
smokehouse after a hog killing'
"—then promptly proceeded to
pursue her idea of a straight
woman's existence. She
assumed the role of the
ultimate dimpled sexpot for a
long line of often abusive men,
while her unlikely career
trajectory had her going from
female impersonator to female
vamp in TV variety shows and
movies like Don Knotts's The
Love God? Most of the time,
Brevard passed as a biological
woman, relishing the chance to
flaunt her way into acceptance,
only to realize a sad truth we all
could have told her about: Gals
are treated as second-class
citizens just like sissies are.

On her road to discovery,

Brevard throws in wacky
secrets ("Even with a painful
rectal tear, I had a great 22nd
birthday") and showbiz peeks
right out of a gender-bending
version of Gypsy. She rebuked
the advances of stars like Andy
Griffith and Anthony Newley,
who exposed himself in front of
her before being sent home
with his tail between his legs.
While swatting hands and
searching for respect, Brevard
also managed to fend off a
stalker, marry a gay guy,
become a lesbian for a while,
and work as a stripper in Reno,
where the boss had Brevard
drop her drawers, then decided,
"Looks like a twat to me—and
I've seen a million of 'em."

Any guilt you might feel about

devouring such a seemingly
trashy read—which was none in
my case—dissolves when you
realize how invaluable this book
is as a document of
transsexualism in the pre-
Stonewall era, when extra
heapings of pain and torment
drove people headlong into the
genital guillotine. While Brevard
dishes up Rabelaisian tales like
a raucously wise aunt, she's
also willing to dig beneath the
veneer of trannie mirth to get
to harsher truths. What she
finds is a society that punishes
those who defy assigned gender
roles because they upset the
status quo. She uncovers a
world that stigmatizes femmes
and a gay community that's
deeply ashamed of drag; a
women's movement that
generally leaves trannies behind
and a transsexual community
so anxious to blend in that it
strives to erase all evidence of
its maleness.

"As a woman, I was still the

brunt of the boys' jokes,"
Brevard remembers. "At least
they weren't laughing at a
faggot. They were making fun
of a woman. Out of gratitude
and relief, I laughed louder than
anyone. . . . In my desire to
please, I scripted a role of
subservience, inferiority, and
anxiety."

Brevard's multiple layers of self-loathing

ultimately became even more oppressive
than her heels and false lashes, but her
loving mother (now deceased) kept her so
 grounded she might as well have been in
flats and glasses. It was when the men
finally stopped clutching at her that Brevard
found her self-respect. "Distancing myself
from the queer community," she realizes, "I
went underground to become part of
heterosexual society. This translated into a
denial of my transgendered history. To
deny one's history is to deny one's self."
Well said, lady.

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REVIEWS | CONTENTS | AUTHOR BIO | SUBJECT CATEGORIES

An absorbing autobiography of a transsexual

The Woman I Was Not Born To Be

A Transsexual Journey

Aleshia Brevard
Q&A with Aleshia Brevard

"...an entertaining and heartfelt journey from male to female,

ostracism to acceptance, and obscurity to fame. ... Aleshia Brevard's
journey is a brilliant, gutsy, and insightful look at a life
simultaneously marginalized and in the spotlight."
—Lambda Book Report

Told with humor and flair, this is the autobiography of one

  transsexual's wild ride from boyhood as Alfred Brevard ("Buddy")    
Crenshaw in rural Tennessee to voluptuous female entertainer in
Hollywood. Aleshia Brevard, as she is now known, underwent
transitional surgery in Los Angeles in 1962, one of the first such
operations in the United States. (The famous sexual surgery pioneer
Harry Benjamin himself broke the news to Brevard's parents.)

Under the stage name Lee Shaw, Brevard worked as a drag queen at
Finocchio's, a San Francisco club, doing Marilyn Monroe
impersonations. (Like Marilyn, she sought romance all the time and
had a string of entanglements with men.) Later, she worked as a
stripper in Reno and as a Playboy Bunny at the Sunset Strip hutch.

After playing opposite Don Knotts in the movie The Love God,
Brevard appeared in other films and broke into TV as a regular on the
Red Skelton Show. She created the role of Tex on the daytime soap
opera One Life To Live. As a woman, Brevard returned to teach
theater at East Tennessee State, the same university she had
attended as a boy.

This memoir is a rare pre-Women's Movement account of coming to

terms with gender identity. Brevard writes frankly about the degree
to which she organized her life around pleasing men, and how absurd
 it all seems to her now.

BACK TO TOP

Reviews

"The Woman I Was not Born to Be is not the kind of book one really
expects from an academic press: no statistics, no elaborate
theoretical structure. Nor is it the story of people whom history has
utterly ignored. Mocked, crucified, tortured, and jailed, yes; ignored,
no. But I'm glad Temple University Press chose to publish it: in
academia as in real life, a reasonably well-adjusted, kind-hearted
woman who was born male is not so common."
—Amy Bloom, Wilson Quarterly

BACK TO TOP

www.AleshiaBrevard.com

Contents

1. Just for a Change

2. Farm Boy
3. Drag Queen
4. A Man in the House
5. Alfred, Adieu
6. The Coed
7. Burlesque Queen
8. Miss Congeniality
9. Call Me Mrs.
10. Teacher! Teacher!
11. A Playboy Bunny
12. That Female Bunch
13. Fashion’s Guru
14. Off-Broadway Baby
15. A Faceless Intruder
16. Mother’s Final gift
17. The Finished Produce
Index

BACK TO TOP

About the Author(s)

Aleshia Brevard continues to be active in theater as

an actress and director.

Subject Categories
 Gender Studies
Biography

BACK TO TOP

© 2002 Temple University. All Rights Reserved. This page: http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1520_reg.html