As 14-year-old Ridley looked in the dressing room mirror at Von Maur in 2020, they felt sick to their stomach.
After years of praying to a higher power, the usually non-religious teenager was painfully confronted at every corner with the thing they prayed would not happen — from the reflection of school windows to the mirrors at home. With each glimpse, they got shaky and nauseated witnessing something that didn’t look right.
Their body.
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A swimsuit in a department store laid bare Ridley’s reality: the flat chest they prayed for since childhood had not been delivered with the onset of puberty — quite the opposite. The body they saw in the mirror was a stranger who accosted them any time they looked.
“It almost felt like one of those dreams where you … go to school without pants on,” Ridley analogized the feeling to. “I would see myself in my mirror … and fall into this hole. I would obsess about how I looked. It didn’t feel right.”
From the outside, their cisgender mother thought the tears and pain she saw were the same insecurities she struggled with as a teenager.
But many therapy sessions, medications and doctor’s appointments later, medical and mental health professionals confirmed that Ridley’s body dysmorphia as a gender nonbinary person was more than skin deep.
The Iowa City teenager started to withdraw from life, spending their days hunkered in their bedroom. They pulled out of tennis, dance and the activities they loved doing. After a pediatrician and mental health provider discovered disordered eating, therapeutic conversations followed to uncover the root of it all.
“As we continued to listen and have patience, Ridley was able to articulate very clearly the heart of it around their identity, and very specifically, the growth of their breasts that was making them painfully uncomfortable in their body,” said Ridley’s mother, Karen Butler.
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Ridley, now 17, tried different things to make it all click together — the way their body looked and their own conviction of who they were. They tried on their older brother’s clothes, played around with makeup styles and used masculine pronouns.
After years of wearing a chest binder, receiving therapy, having extensive conversations with doctors and getting signoffs from multiple specialists, they were referred to a surgeon at the University of Iowa. In November, Ridley was one of a very small number of minors in Iowa to receive top surgery to remove both of their breasts.
Just days later, for the first time, the tears Ridley cried seeing their own body found new meaning: joy. After years of medication and therapy, the surgical solution was able to treat the symptoms of gender dysphoria in a way their antidepressants couldn’t.
“I felt both physically and metaphorically like a giant weight had been lifted off my chest,” Ridley said. “Surgery was the only solution for that.”
No part of their treatment regimen has been, in itself, a magic bullet. But since November, the results have been decisive.
Ridley is fully confident in the way they carry their body. Their personality is visibly lighter, buoyed by many more smiles than before.
“It’s been incredibly freeing and comforting,” said Butler.
Had they waited five more months to schedule surgery, the care recommended after years of reflection, treatment and careful deliberation between the family and their medical professionals would have been denied.
For other transgender youth like Ridley, Senate File 538 signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds Wednesday means the gender-affirming care that makes living in their own bodies bearable is now illegal.
Gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary youth doesn’t usually start with or include surgery. For many youth coming to terms with who they are, treatment options give them breathing room to process how they’re feeling while putting a pause on body changes.
“(Legislators are) making it sound like a 14-year-old walks into a clinic on Monday and has surgery on Friday,” said Butler. “It just doesn’t happen that way.”
For 14-year-old Willa Turner, a trans girl in Mount Vernon, it means starting on puberty blockers after socially transitioning with a different name and pronouns.
Puberty blockers are shots or tiny arm implants that dissolve over time, giving children the time they need to process their feelings and receive therapy to understand who they are. Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in children since 1993, they put a pause on rapid body changes like height growth, breast growth, menstruation, voice deepening and facial hair — all of which can be detrimental to the mental health of teenagers who feel like aliens in their own body.
Puberty blockers are reversible, but changes made to the body by puberty are not.
Gender-affirming treatments for children — even with the parental permission that was already required by medical providers — will be prohibited immediately. Doctors with patients currently receiving now-banned treatments will have until Sept. 18 to discontinue treatment.
www.thegazette.com
After years of praying to a higher power, the usually non-religious teenager was painfully confronted at every corner with the thing they prayed would not happen — from the reflection of school windows to the mirrors at home. With each glimpse, they got shaky and nauseated witnessing something that didn’t look right.
Their body.
Advertisement
A swimsuit in a department store laid bare Ridley’s reality: the flat chest they prayed for since childhood had not been delivered with the onset of puberty — quite the opposite. The body they saw in the mirror was a stranger who accosted them any time they looked.
“It almost felt like one of those dreams where you … go to school without pants on,” Ridley analogized the feeling to. “I would see myself in my mirror … and fall into this hole. I would obsess about how I looked. It didn’t feel right.”
From the outside, their cisgender mother thought the tears and pain she saw were the same insecurities she struggled with as a teenager.
But many therapy sessions, medications and doctor’s appointments later, medical and mental health professionals confirmed that Ridley’s body dysmorphia as a gender nonbinary person was more than skin deep.
The Iowa City teenager started to withdraw from life, spending their days hunkered in their bedroom. They pulled out of tennis, dance and the activities they loved doing. After a pediatrician and mental health provider discovered disordered eating, therapeutic conversations followed to uncover the root of it all.
“As we continued to listen and have patience, Ridley was able to articulate very clearly the heart of it around their identity, and very specifically, the growth of their breasts that was making them painfully uncomfortable in their body,” said Ridley’s mother, Karen Butler.
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Ridley, now 17, tried different things to make it all click together — the way their body looked and their own conviction of who they were. They tried on their older brother’s clothes, played around with makeup styles and used masculine pronouns.
After years of wearing a chest binder, receiving therapy, having extensive conversations with doctors and getting signoffs from multiple specialists, they were referred to a surgeon at the University of Iowa. In November, Ridley was one of a very small number of minors in Iowa to receive top surgery to remove both of their breasts.
Just days later, for the first time, the tears Ridley cried seeing their own body found new meaning: joy. After years of medication and therapy, the surgical solution was able to treat the symptoms of gender dysphoria in a way their antidepressants couldn’t.
“I felt both physically and metaphorically like a giant weight had been lifted off my chest,” Ridley said. “Surgery was the only solution for that.”
No part of their treatment regimen has been, in itself, a magic bullet. But since November, the results have been decisive.
Ridley is fully confident in the way they carry their body. Their personality is visibly lighter, buoyed by many more smiles than before.
“It’s been incredibly freeing and comforting,” said Butler.
Had they waited five more months to schedule surgery, the care recommended after years of reflection, treatment and careful deliberation between the family and their medical professionals would have been denied.
For other transgender youth like Ridley, Senate File 538 signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds Wednesday means the gender-affirming care that makes living in their own bodies bearable is now illegal.
What is gender-affirming care?
Gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary youth doesn’t usually start with or include surgery. For many youth coming to terms with who they are, treatment options give them breathing room to process how they’re feeling while putting a pause on body changes.
“(Legislators are) making it sound like a 14-year-old walks into a clinic on Monday and has surgery on Friday,” said Butler. “It just doesn’t happen that way.”
For 14-year-old Willa Turner, a trans girl in Mount Vernon, it means starting on puberty blockers after socially transitioning with a different name and pronouns.
Puberty blockers are shots or tiny arm implants that dissolve over time, giving children the time they need to process their feelings and receive therapy to understand who they are. Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in children since 1993, they put a pause on rapid body changes like height growth, breast growth, menstruation, voice deepening and facial hair — all of which can be detrimental to the mental health of teenagers who feel like aliens in their own body.
Puberty blockers are reversible, but changes made to the body by puberty are not.
Gender-affirming treatments for children — even with the parental permission that was already required by medical providers — will be prohibited immediately. Doctors with patients currently receiving now-banned treatments will have until Sept. 18 to discontinue treatment.
With ‘lifesaving’ healthcare banned, transgender youth, families look outside Iowa
Following Gov. Kim Reynolds’ signing of a new law banning gender-affirming care, families with transgender children are searching for answers.
www.thegazette.com
