Christine Jorgensen

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Christine Jorgensen didn't invent transsexuality, but she sure put it in the headlines back on December 1, 1952, when news of her "sex-change" surgery in Denmark was leaked to the press.

It's still a bit of a mystery why the young American formerly known as George became such a celebrity simply for undergoing a bit of genital reupholstery. Similar procedures had been performed for 20 or 30 years prior to Jorgensen's surgery, and had even been widely reported in the press, without drawing undue attention. But when the New York Post reported that "EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY: OPERATIONS TRANSFORM BRONX YOUTH," it unleashed a torrent of publicity. According to Publisher's Weekly, Jorgensen was the most written-about person in the press in 1953. As she herself noted years later in her autobiography, "I found it a shocking commentary on the press of our times that I drove news of the hydrogen bomb tests on Eniwetok Atoll off the front pages of newspapers around the world."

A number of factors probably contributed to her celebrity: a newfound awe in our scientific capabilities at the dawn of the atomic and computer age; a pervasive public anxiety about homosexuality -- especially when it involved former military personnel -- and the perception that transsexual surgery could be a "cure" for queers that would restore the appearance of heterosexuality; and tensions about gender roles at a time when women who had been in the paid workforce during World War II were encouraged to go back to domestic life. ("Rosie the Riveter" was turning into June Cleaver.)

All that would probably have been moot had Jorgensen not been so photogenic and charismatic. The unprecedented attention she received destroyed any hope she might have had of leading a quiet, private life. Consequently, she surrendered to the inevitable and entered show business as a night club entertainer. For nearly 10 years she was at the top of her field, often making more than $5,000 a week. Later in the '60s she published her autobiography and was the subject of a biographical film. In the early '70s, riding high on the success of her book twenty years after she was first catapulted to fame, she was one of the most popular speakers on the college lecture circuit. She had settled into a modest retirement in Southern California when she died of bladder cancer in 1988, at the age of 62.

This photograph, courtesy of the Danish Royal Archives, shows Christine Jorgensen at the height of her glamour and celebrity in 1954.