"Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, it's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world, except for Lola," sang the Kinks in their tribute to the world of trannies. And over the weekend, more than two dozen transsexual beauties took the stage at the Riviera, where they pranced, strutted, and, some of them, tucked, during the World's Most Beautiful Transsexual contest. Proud to be no longer endowed (well, many of them), the 28 pre-op and post-op women took the stage, some dressing as Celine Dion, others as Joan Crawford, all of them bucking against gender stereotypes and expectations to be the person they're the most comfortable being. And looking quite nice in the process. "The bathing suit competition kind of cracked everyone because the girls were very sexy, sexier I think than they expected them to be," says producer Jimmy Emerson.
To further test the limits of what's beautiful to whom and the ways that should be displayed, in the coming year a transsexual revue featuring many of these women is expected to debut somewhere on the Strip—something that's a little bit "Splash," a little bit "Crazy Girls" and a whole lot Lola. Photographer
Patrick Wirtz chronicled the contest behind the scenes at the Riviera.