ONE WOMAN'S DREAM - She's doing everything she can to realise her ambition to become a senator
Bangkok Post - Story by ARUSA PISUTHIPAN Photo by YINGYONG UN-ANONGRAK
She was crowned a beauty queen at a number of national and international beauty pageants. She looks pretty and sounds articulate. She was born a boy, but chose to live her adult life as a woman. Since childhood, Kerekkong Suan-yos had a different dream from that of other boys his age. While his friends yearned to enter well-recognised universities, become pilots, doctors or teachers, Kerekkong wanted to become a woman.
"I told myself that I had to have a sex-change operation by the age of 21," recalled Kerekkong, better known now as Yonlada "Nok" Komklong, Miss Apsa 2005, and as a tourism ambassador for Pattaya municipality. The little boy's dream eventually came true. At 16, male-to-female gender-reassignment surgery transformed him into a woman.
Born in the northern province of Nan into a middle-class family with machismo in the air _ her father is a police officer and owner of a muay Thai gym _ the 24-year-old beauty queen admitted that it was hard trying to meet her father's expectations. Many times he would take her to the gym to meet his police friends, but his efforts to expose his beloved son to "manly" sports and to such a masculine circle of friends didn't seem to strike a chord with her. "When I was at the boxing stadium, I fought like a girl. When I was at the police station, I wanted to become a policewoman. That's when I knew that I couldn't conform to my father's ideals," Yonlada said.
At school, Yonlada had no difficulties getting along with friends. She was usually treated as an "extra" when playing games with the boys, and as a "star" while with the girls.
She had a rather confused sense of gender identity though. Yonlada had no clue whether she was a girl or a boy until her friends started to tease her about her feminine behaviour. "I knew I was born a boy but I didn't feel like a boy. Rather I felt like I was a girl but, again, I was different from other girls. I didn't know what I was until my friends started calling me tood [sissy]. That's the first time I knew I was a katoey [transsexual]." According to Yonlada, her sexual orientation wasn't influenced by outside factors _ the atmosphere at home, her parents' way of raising her, or her childhood environment. Her desire to become a woman was entirely the result of her inner feelings.
The idea of undergoing gender-reassignment surgery gradually began to take hold back when she was in primary school. As a country boy, Yonlada knew Bangkok was the only place where the operation to fulfil her dream would be available. The need was so strong that she gave up a place at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Chiang Mai University in the hope of getting into a university in the capital. But how could a young, rural lad pay for such an expensive operation (currently between 250,000 and 300,000 baht)?
Each year at school Yonlada was granted a scholarship because of her excellent academic result. Keeping every baht she received, her saving finally paid off, allowing her to afford the surgery, followed by breast implants.
After a very complicated pre-operative process, including almost a dozen psychiatric tests, blood tests, physical check-ups and a five-month wait, the operation was finally approved. "I learned later that the reason the whole process took so long was because the doctor allows some time for patients to reconsider their decision to see whether or not they really want the surgery, since the results are irreversible. For me, everything was so certain," she remarked. As Yonlada had lived as a woman for quite a while before the surgery, she found that life didn't change at all afterwards. "The only difference is that I feel more confident as I'm now a complete woman, both mentally and physically," she added.
She was also more drawn towards beauty contests, to which she was no stranger. Since her days at primary school, Yonlada had entered a number of transsexual beauty pageants, both in her hometown and further afield. To her, these contests were her only chance to get dressed and wear make-up like a woman, as well as to act like one.
"Entering the competitions, for me, was not necessarily to win the prize but to stand on stage and present myself the way I really am." She has entered more than a hundred beauty competitions so far, most of which were for transsexuals only. The first time she "accidentally" appeared on the same stage with women was when she was at Thammasat University. "I was asked to enter a female beauty contest by one of the pageant 'nannies'. I didn't take it seriously as I was sure I'd be screened out once my application form reached them."
However, her application sailed through and the result was far better than she'd expected. The first runner-up title from that contest earned her so much attention that other organisers asked her to grace their pageants. That was when she began to make newspaper headlines. "They said I'd cheated the public because I wasn't a real woman; that I was a fraud," Yonlada said.
She insisted she'd never wanted to lie or mislead anyone but that she had no idea how to reveal the truth. Finally, she felt so uncomfortable with the news that she decided to enter the Miss Apsa Transvestite Competition (aka the Miss Alcazar Purple Star Award) in 2005, with the aim of revealing her true identity. She won the crown. For celebrities everywhere, fame walks hand-in-hand with gossip and vicious rumour. Yonlada, a beauty queen with an unusual background, is no exception. But with the support of her family, friends and partner, she made herself strong and ignored all the whispers behind her back.
Asked about her love life, she said she's never been afraid to love or be loved. "I disagree with the concept that a katoey must be disappointed in love," she commented. "If there's someone who understands me and loves me the way I am, I consider that to be sincere love. "I used to believe that man-katoey relationships wouldn't last. That's why at the beginning [of relationships] I never dared to tell my boyfriends at the time the truth [about my gender] for fear that they'd leave me. Later, I felt so disturbed about living a lie. So I made a promise to myself that I'd never lie again." To Yonlada, what is more important than any of her pageant titles are her educational achievements and the pursuit of knowledge.
Apart from her two bachelor's degrees _ one from the Faculty of Science and Technology, Thammasat University and the other from the Faculty of Humanities, Ramkhamhaeng University _ she is also currently a postgraduate student at Ramkhamhaeng's Faculty of Political Science. This is part of her plan to realise her dream of becoming a senator, so that she can work more for the public. "I want to be a representative of Thai people," she explained. "I want Thai society in general to be more open-minded. But my focus, isn't on katoeys or on any other group in particular. "I want to show that a person like me, considered inferior by so many, is capable of doing something great for other people too."
To her, being a male-to-female transsexual is nothing to be ashamed of, and she never wants to be referred to as anything but a katoey. And what has being a katoey taught her? "That it doesn't matter which gender you are born. You can be gay, lesbian, straight ... whatever. What's important is to live your life with pride and happiness."Similar Threads:
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