I am with Jahaira Gonzalez, who is the director of outreach at Destination Tomorrow.
Hello and welcome to I Weigh.
Thank you for having me.
What has your experience been with silicone? Have you ever used it?
So when I first got introduced to silicone, I was about 21.
There was a trans woman that I had met in the club.
And she was telling me, you know, "I love your look, but, you know, if you ever needed enhancements, you know, here's my card. Give me a call".
I started off with my face first and it got to the point where I will say that I got addicted to it.
When I kept going to her to get injections, you know, she had told me that was it.
"I can't do no more. I think you have enough in your face".
Whereabouts in your face did you have the silicone?
So when I first got injections, I did my cheekbones.
And what happened was that when I constantly kept going to do my cheeks, you know, obviously that's where it stays at.
So it kept building up.
And when it kept building up, it started to look almost like a Muppet.
You ever seen the Muppets? They have the high cheekbones.
Right.
All this right here was skinny.
And I was living like that for two years.
And I thought that this was something that, you know, I really wanted.
And then the regrets that are coming along,
because now all I have is just cheekbones and my side is all sunken in, you know?
And that wasn't the look that I really wanted to go for.
So then I had to think, like, what am I going to do?
So I went back to her and I spoke to her about like, you know, how can I reduce my cheeks?
And she had told me, well, "let's do cortisone shots". And cortisone shots is
Is this all painful?
Yes.
[Jameela] How painful?
Very painful, you can say, because once you start doing the base shot.
And then afterwards, you keep going back.
[Jameela] Yeah.
You start feeling your skin to kind of stretch out.
And it's almost like you're feeling like a popping sound inside your skin, you know?
And when I had told her about going back into the cortisone, when I had told her about that,
you know, I wanted to kind of bring down the volume of my face.
And she had told me "well we have cortisone shots".
And I said, "okay, well, let's try it".
And she explained to me, "well, the cortisone is like almost like acid. So what we're gonna do is that I'm gonna inject you".
That sounds painful as hell.
[Jahaira] Yes.
"I'm gonna inject you inside your cheeks. And within a couple of days, you will see"
A reduction.
A reduction, a slight reduction.
Did it work?
To be honest with you, I didn't really see too much of a difference.
So then did you try silicone anywhere else in your body or was that it?
[Jahaira] Yes.
You know, I had to kind of like find another source of like kind of feminizing my face even more.
So then I decided to pump my jaw line
because, again, like I was saying, when I was younger, my jaw line was very strong.
So what she did was she said, "okay, so if you don't want no more high cheekbones, we could kind of match everything together. So let's pump your jaw line".
So I started playing with my jaw line I started playing with my chin.
And I start you know, once I started, you know, once I finished with my face,
I saw that my face was coming together.
So it almost looked like, you know, I was just like kind of a chunky girl with a chunky face.
And the next step I did was I decided to do my body.
And she did my hips, my buttocks, my calves.
And she started doing my top and bottom lip.
Okay.
What is your overall experience been like with silicone? Have you had any complications?
[Jahaira] Yes.
I started to notice that I was getting burning sensation, especially on my jaw line area.
I went to the doctors. I spoke with my primary care doctor about it.
Of course, you know, they did scans and stuff like that to see like if there was any type of infections.
Was there any shame at all?
Yes, definitely.
What was the shame about?
The shame was about just like walking outside every single day.
And just having people looking at me and staring at me.
And I just felt like I didn't even belong into society, you know?
And these wasn't stares of, like, you know, smiling and saying, "you look good".
This was stares. I was like, you know, "wow, you look like a monster" or "what is that?".
And, you know.
I'm sorry.
So because of that, I started getting into depression.
Hmm.
Well, I'm glad you're not there anymore?
So of course, you know, as a trans woman, you know what I'm saying, we always find the imperfections that we have and we always want more.
Do you still want more now?
Silicone?
Yeah.
No, absolutely not.
How come?
So once I started getting the the burning sensation on my face.
I decided to save up some money and I got it removed.
And that was a little pricey.
I had to come out of like I paid like almost $4,500 to remove.
And I still have more to go.
But that was the first step.
And as far as my body,
When I got injected into my buttocks and into my hip area, I'm sure we used like one percent of the anesthesia.
And because of that, that kind of like left marks on my body like stains like little black stains.
So I had to go and tattooed everything around it.
So that way, you know,
So it's scarring?
nobody was really noticing it. Yeah.
And how's, I mean, have you had any health implications other than the burning?
Thank God, no.
I think you were very lucky, you know, from what I've read.
You were very lucky that A the person that you went to had clean substances that were,
[Jahaira] Yes.
and also the fact that she had the ethics to tell you when enough was enough.
Most people don't have access to people like that.
And would you say that you've heard stories of other people having less lucky experiences than yourself?
Of course, so many of my girlfriends who I went to different places to get pumped.
Some of them never even made it out of the basement or out of the person's apartment or hotel.
As in they died?
Yes.
There and then?
Yes.
I didn't know you could die immediately from silicone.
Yes. Because once the silicone, you know, and depending on who was injecting you, you know, if they go too deep it could travel.
Because it goes into your bloodstream.
[Jahaira] Yes.
So it goes so that I've heard about this.
It goes into your bloodstream and then it reaches your lungs almost immediately so you can't breathe and then you die.
I'm sorry that that's how you've lost your friends.
Yeah, thank you.
And there are also cases I've heard of it disfiguring people.
Most definitely.
You know, where maybe they don't even know.
Maybe they don't have a primary caregiver and they don't even know that something's being rejected by their body.
And I've seen myself where it's not worked and the body's kind of rejected it.
And it turns out not to look the way that someone had wanted it to look.
And so then it's so expensive, as you know, from having to then try and remove that or fix that.
That's so much harder because it creates so much scarring inside the body.
Most definitely.
So what advice do you give to young people who come in and they maybe can't access proper health care because it's too expensive
and they come to you and they say, "I really want to match on the outside the way I feel on the inside and I'm thinking about getting silicone".
What do you tell them?
I tell them absolutely not.
Definitely don't do it.
It's not worth it.
And to be honest with you, like I don't even think.
And I can only speak for myself and for the trans community, I could say,
nobody's really doing that anymore.
You know, as far as my community,
there are insurance now that are covering for procedures for trans men and women, you know?
So now the girls don't have to worry about, you know, going to these places to get silicone done in their breast or in their face or in their bodies.
Because now Medicaid is actually paying for these procedures to do facial feminization,
to do body contouring, to do breast implants.
Well, thank you so much for sharing your story about that.
I hope that that travels because I think a lot of young people who follow, I Weigh
a lot of them don't have family members they can turn to for advice about these things.
And it's so great that you also work for a company Destination Tomorrow, which I hope people will go out and look up.
But thank you for the work that you do and for coming to talk to me today.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate you.
Thank you.