Transgender Model’s Expensive Body Worth The Price Tag, Fans Say

CEDAR GROVE, NJ — Model and celebrity Amanda Lepore has spent tens of thousands of dollars on her body. But her fans say that it’s worth every penny.

It’s hard to pigeonhole Lepore with a single label. These days, she reportedly makes her living modeling, performing burlesque, singing and hosting nightclub events. But Leopre – who describes herself as a “beautiful lab experiment” – has also worked as a dominatrix, at a Newark gentlemen’s club and as a makeup counter employee, and has lent out her image to products such as this Swatch-produced timepiece.

Much of her fame is due to her open and proud experience with plastic surgery.

In her recently released book, “Doll Parts,” Lepore - who grew up as a boy in Cedar Grove and began her transition with hormone therapy when she was 15-years-old - claims that she has the “most expensive body on Earth.”

Here are some of the procedures that went into creating Lepore’s ultra-expensive body, according to the New York Post (read the full article here):

• Gender reassignment surgery - $10,000
• Double eyelid surgery - $9,000
• Lip augmentation - $5,500
• Augmentation mammoplasty - $5,000
• Cheekbone augmentation - $2,400
• Hairline lowering and eyebrow lifting - $2,000
• Rib-reshaping surgery: $1,500
• Hormones - $550 per month (ongoing)
• Rhinoplasty – free (gift from a New York plastic surgeon)

To Lepore, the process has been cathartic. Tell her about the alleged dangers of silicone and here’s her reply: “‘I don’t care, as long as I look beautiful in the coffin.”

But it’s not about vanity, she says in her book.

“A lot of people think that I’m addicted to plastic surgery. But the truth is, if I’m addicted to anything, it’s beauty. If you happen to be young and transgender, then you’re used to people being hateful towards you when all you want to do is exist. Through all the insanity in my life, there was only one thing I could control: myself. On the outside, obviously, but on the inside too. I focused on not letting other people’s opinions have any effect on me whatsoever, and that’s how I’ve lived my life ever since.”

Lepore’s fans and supporters say that the price tag on her body is worth the price tag.

“Amanda is one of a kind because of her unique and singular look in the art of fashion,” industry maven Patricia Field said. “She has established herself as the most original and glamorous image in the world of transgender.”

“I hate everyone but Amanda Lepore,” Miley Cyrus once said.

Comments from her fans on social media include:

• “Sometimes perfection has a cost. Lepore is a goddess.”
• “Thank for your openness… You are great!”

Some LGBT activists have expressed mixed feelings about the conflict between Lepore’s “fearless expression” and her possible encouragement of “conforming gender expression to societal norms.”

But as Denise Norris, a trans activist who served on the board of Marriage Equality USA, says, Lepore is a barometer of just how much the public discussion about transsexual lifestyles has changed.

“The only way we can judge Amanda is through the eyes of 1987,” Norris recently told the New York Times. “Doing that, she becomes a bookmark to how much we’ve changed in 30 years.”

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YouTube screenshot: Richard Lynch