This Article Reminded Me…

… of a book that I read when I was first sticking my toe out the door to see which way the wind was blowing.

Transgender beauty queen set to marry multi-millionaire Arab boyfriend who spent £50,000 on her surgery 

• Tiffany-Rose Davies lives as a woman after being born a male called Niall

• She is in a relationship with a wealthy Arab property developer from Dubai

• Says he is willing to pay the £50,000 needed for her sex change surgery

• Adds that the pair will get married and move to Duabi once she becomes a woman 

Daily Mail
By Jennifer Newton
PUBLISHED: 21 June 2015

A transgender beauty queen is set to marry her wealthy Arab property developer boyfriend who is splashing out £50,000 on her sex-change surgery.

Tiffany-Rose Davies, 23, was born a male called Niall, and considers herself female although she is yet to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

Her partner, who she only calls Yaser, is now forking out the cash needed for her to have the operation, along with cosmetic surgery so he can marry her as a female.

They plan to tie the knot next year and set up a home together in Dubai after the surgery.

This reminded me of the actress Caroline 'Tula' Cossey who went to an Arab country and was virtually held a prisoner there. I had read the Playboy article about her and bought her book “My Story” and then low and behold what pops up on the news feeds…

Caroline 'Tula' Cossey, Who Became Playboy's First Transgender Model, Looks Back
The Huffington Post
By Curtis M. Wong
Posted: 06/23/2015

Caroline “Tula” Cossey, who became the world's first transgender model to pose for Playboy magazine in 1991, opens up in her first media interview in two decades for the publication.

In the 1970s, the British-born Cossey appeared in issues of Australian Vogue and Harper's Bazaar before landing a role in the 1981 James Bond film, “For Your Eyes Only.” Shortly after the movie's release, however, she was outed as transgender by the tabloid News of the World.

Although she opened up about her transition in interviews with Howard Stern and Arsenio Hall, Cossey, now 60, eventually walked away from the spotlight and now lives a relatively quiet life in Atlanta. "There’s a difference between being known as Tula the transsexual international model versus just a successful model," she tells Playboy's Shane Michael Singh in the July and August issue of the magazine. "It wasn’t the same. I felt like a circus act."

Playboy officials say Cossey remains the only transgender model to receive a full spread in the magazine's pages. Another trans model, Ines Rau, appeared in the magazine's May 2014 issue, but hers was not a complete pictorial.

The Huffington Post article had a link to the Playboy article,

BOND GIRL TULA WAS THE FIRST TRANSGENDER WOMAN TO BARE IT ALL IN PLAYBOY MAGAZINE
By Shane Michael Singh
JUNE 22, 2015

Before Bruce Jenner sat down with Diane Sawyer, before Laverne Cox earned an Emmy nod for Orange Is the New Black and before President Barack Obama appointed the first transgender woman to a senior government position, there was Tula. A striking six-foot-tall British model whose face graced magazine covers and popped up in national ad campaigns for vodka and lingerie in the 1970s, Caroline “Tula” Cossey never yearned to be more than a working model and, someday, a wife. But when her enormous success as a model backfired into public hysteria, she had decisions to make. She could stand and fight, or she could run away. She chose to fight. In the wake of it all, Tula would become the first of many things, much to her surprise.

In June 1981, Tula debuted as a Bond girl in For Your Eyes Only. To promote the film, she, along with the film’s other Bond girls, appeared in a Playboy pictorial, images from which appear in these pages. Tula’s career was soaring. Life was good. But everything changed the following year. The British tabloid News of the World revealed Tula’s secret in a single headline: JAMES BOND GIRL WAS A BOY.

I remember going to buy the Playboy issue and I was so scared that everyone would know why I was buying that issue. I felt like there were big neon signs pointing to me… “Transsexual!”

And it was even worst for me when I went to buy her book, a book about a “transsexual” I was trying to be inconspicuous as possible looking for the book in book stores. If a clerk as to help I turned them the help down, I couldn’t tell them the book I was looking for. I finally found a copy in a chain book store so I went to another store a couple of towns away to buy their last copy, the clerk smiled at me! She knows! She knows! OMG she knows why I want to buy the book!

Ah, the good ol’ days,