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AS WITH ANY new academic field, transgender studies has created its own pantheon of canonical texts and heroic figures. One of the most celebrated figures has been Christine Jorgensen, and not without good reason; when the news announced in late 1952 that the former GI had undergone sex reassignment surgery in Denmark, it created a maelstrom of media attention and introduced many Americans to the concept of transsexuality. Jorgensen remained in the news throughout the 1950s as she appeared on television talk shows, starred in her own nightclub show, and her 1967 autobiography was adapted and released as a motion picture, titled The Christine forgensen Story, in 1970. Her engaging personality captured the imagination of many Americans, both past and present, and she has remained the most prominent individual within historical treatments of transsexuality.1 However, Jorgensen was not the only public representation of transsexuality in the mid-twentieth century. In April 1966, for example, African American transwoman Delisa Newton graced the cover of Apia, and her autobiography was the subject of a two-part series featured in the magazine. Similar to much of the press coverage of Jorgensen, Sepia's coverage of Newton highlighted her lonely childhood and her fervent desire to one day be a good wife. However, whereas Jorgensen's story appeared in numerous mainstream news magazines, such as Time and Newsweek and widely circulated newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, Newton's story appeared only in the African American press and tabloid newspapers such as the National Insider. The disparity between the media reception of Jorgensen and Newton highlights the significance of race within media representations of transsexuality and suggests that such public narratives of transsexuality are not simply about gender but also about race, class, and sexuality.
Building on the emergent scholarship on transgender studies, this article denaturalizes the preeminent position Jorgensen has enjoyed within historical treatments of transsexuality and highlights the significance of Jorgensen's whiteness within public representations. By discussing Jorgensen in relation to the numerous other transwomen who appeared in the mainstream media in the mid-twentieth century, I track the formation of the "transsexual" within popular discourse. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was those transwomen (primarily Jorgensen) depicted with the most proximity to white womanhood, who gained the most visibility in the mainstream press and...