In the Life: Ep. 1701, "A New Look"

[Michael Billy:] On this month's "In the Life": a church deeply divided. [Harold Lewis:] You can't really expect a church to prosper when it's based on being against something. [Billy:] Gay theater is born. [Robert Patrick:] The Cino was the first off-off-Broadway theater and now people are calling it the first gay theater. [Billy:] Charisma in the kitchen. [Josie Smith-Malave:] As women, we have to work twice as hard. [Billy:] And, beauty on the black market. [Elizabeth Rivera:] 100% industrial-grade silicone bought from a hardware store. [Billy:] All this and more stories about the gay experience. [Narrator:] "In the Life" is funded in part by: the H. Van Ameringen Foundation. Additional support provided by: the Ford Foundation; and by Arcus Foundation; and these funders; and by the annual support of In the Life members like you. ["In the Life" theme music] Hi, I'm Katherine Linton. And welcome to "In theLife"'s 16th season premiere. As our world and our communities quickly grow and change, so do our perspectives, our art, and the issues that affect us. As you've grown, so have we. And with this new season comes a new look, new stories, and a new face. Over the past few months, we've been searching for a new host. It was quite a process to find the right person. Here's a look at  some of the auditions. And three, two, one. "In the Life". [Auditionee #1:] For many love and life exists beyond the basic concept of men and women. Gender is fluid, vibrant, even unpredictable. But in the end, individuals must define it for themselves. [Auditionee #2:] You're about to meet some remarkable individuals at the forefront of a movement that will change the status quo. Welcome to "In the Life". "In the Life". "In the Life". "In the Life". Hi, I'm Michael Billy. For 15 seasons, "In the Life" has brought you news and compelling stories about the gay and lesbian experience in America and around the world. I'm honored to be your new host for the series, introducing our 16th year on public television. In this episode, our stories take you to church, into the kitchen, back to the 1950s, and into the world of plastic surgery and body corrections, both traditional and on the black market. With nearly 80 million members worldwide, the Anglican Communion and its American arm, the Episcopal Church, is one of the largest religious communities in the world. But four years ago, the American Episcopalians elected their first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire. As a result, a heated debate about the issues surrounding homosexuality has led to a battle between conservative and progressive factions within the church. It's a complex story with global implications. [Bishop:] My brothers and sisters in Christ, greet your new bishop co-adju. [cheering and applause] [Gene Robinson:] You cannot imagine what an honor it is for you to have called me. There are people for whom this is a moment of great pain and confusion and anger. [drum music] [Gregory Brewer:] Certainly there have been times where there have been gay bishops. But I think the distinction is, Gene is probably the first to come and to say, openly, outwardly, "This is who I am. I believe this to be the will of God for my life, and therefore, this is what I bring into what it means to be a bishop." [Robinson:] It's not about me. It's about so many other people who find themselves at the margins. [Brewer:] Gene Robinson does not embody, according to the teaching of the prayer book, someone who would promote the faith and teaching of the apostles. It was another sign of the disintegration of the unity that had existed in the Episcopal Church, and, and the willingness of the Episcopal Church to stand in opposition to the opinion of the vast majority of Anglicans. [Robert Duncan:] The Episcopal Church has determined to walk apart. The Episcopal Church has confirmed the decision it made in 2003 to go its own way, and to step outside the boundaries of historic Anglicanism. [Billy:] Reverend Dr. Harold Lewis is rector of Calvary Church, a neo-gothic church in the shady side section of Pittsburgh. In 2003, he brought a lawsuit against Pittsburgh bishop Robert Duncan. Duncan heads up the conservative Anglican Communion Network, formed as a response to the growing liberalism of the Episcopal Church. [Harold Lewis:] If a parish is in the, in the diocese decide to go to another denomination or another entity, either within the Anglican Communion or without it, they would have no rights to the property. And that doesn't only mean bricks and mortar, it means assets, endowments and so on. To me it was a logical and reasonable and a good step to take, looking into the future. If this split happens, we need to protect our property to make sure that all of this stuff doesn't get sucked under this new wing of whatever, this Anglican Communion Network. [Daryl Fenton:] The national church has a huge legal war chest. We'll defend ourselves as required and as best we can. But at a certain point, you know, ministry becomes the critical thing and not property. I raised the question once: if the Episcopal Church is so terrible, you know what I mean, why do you remain in it? The answer is clear. The day that Bishop Duncan says he's no longer the Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh, then he will have no more claim to the property. Were it not a property issue, this thing would have been over and done with long ago. [Billy:] Less than two miles away on Squirrel Hill, The Church of the Redeemer is another progressive church in the largely conservative diocese of Pittsburgh. [Cynthia Bronson Sweigart:] If you state that you are a progressive Episcopal church, that is an automatic indication that we welcome gays and lesbians to participate fully in our life. The current gays and lesbians really treasure here is that Redeemer has had a history of openness to the gay and lesbian community. [Andrew Eppich:] For a period of about nine months, I stopped coming to church because I thought that I wasn't welcome. And it wasn't necessarily Redeemer, it was more by Bishop Duncan. I was feeling sort of rejected and judged.  And Redeemer is not like that at all. [Wiltrud Fassbinder:] There are quite a few GLBT people who come to church and don't want to be in a special situation. We don't want to have our separate gay church. I don't want to go to a group with just gay people. I want to be just a normal parishioner. [Eppich:] Throughout my absence, parishioners and Cynthia had called just to see if there was anything they had done, or anything they could do. And they were very concerned 'cause I had been listening to a lot of the controversy, what Bishop Duncan was saying, which he wasn't willing to acknowledge us. And when you hear prayers for, you know, homosexuals to change their ways, it's, that's painful. [choral music] [Bronwon Sweigart:] Each and every one of us grow into, or make choices about what our identity is going to be. And the approaches, or the way we get to the best understanding of who we are may differ, but we all do arrive at such as individuals and also as a community. The members support the ordination of gays and lesbians to all three orders in the Episcopal Church. It really means for us that we consider ourselves progressive, because we feel ourselves to be inclusive in a way that, that others are not. [choral music] [Lewis:] There was a priest in California whose parish left the Episcopal Church and is now under Uganda. And in his exit interview he said, "I love the Episcopal Church but it ha..," but this is a quote, "it's been going downhill ever since the civil rights movement." [Winnie Varghese:] What's happening in our church right now is very much like what happened around what our church decided to do around civil rights and also the ordination of women. I'm not a priest in the way that all men that were ordained by men in my church are. I'm not acknowledged to be. And so I think for some of us when, when there were threats around Gene's election, it was hard to believe it could be any worse than it already is. Gay empowerment, if you want to call it that, was like the last straw. It was Blacks, women, now gays.  And basically white male hegemony was threatened. [Billy:] The Anglican Communion Network, based in Pittsburgh and headed by Bishop Duncan provides support to churches in Kenya and Uganda, home to two of the most vocal anti-gay bishops in the worldwide Anglican community. [Lewis:] You see, if you look at these conservative movements and all their manifestations, one thing they have in common is that they are virtually lily white. It's amazing that they seem to have attracted no people of color in their movement. But I don't think they especially want to, except for, of course, the people of color who happen to be Africans, because it's what I call "a marriage of convenience". [choral music] [Billy:] In May 2007, Nigerian archbishop Peter Akinola installed Martyn Minns as bishop of CANA or Convocation of Anglicans in North America. Minns heads a group of conservatives in Fairfax, Virginia, who have left the Episcopal Church and realigned themselves with the church of Nigeria. [Lewis:] The group maintains that the consecration of, of Bishop Robinson and the ways that moderates and liberals interpret scripture has tainted the church to - in such a way that it is, it's, it becomes unfit for them to be part of it. [Billy:] The congregation is one of at least a dozen parishes that have left the diocese of Virginia, and like many across the U.S. are now embroiled in litigation over church property. [Lewis:] They voted to leave the Episcopal Church and in the meantime, Archbishop Akinola offered them a safe harbor, so to speak. [Brewer:] There have been within the past several months the announcements of, I think, three perhaps four Americans who either have been or will be  consecrated as bishops representing African jurisdictions: Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria. Certainly those three. So the irony is that, that the conservative movement people have only recently discovered the Anglican Communion, you know what I mean? Haha, I mean, I often say people who they say, "well now we're under the bishop of Rwanda." I wonder if you gave them a blank map of Africa if they could point to Rwanda on it. [Billy:] It may seem like a strange alliance but African bishops and American conservatives have found a common cause: a belief that gay people are immoral and should not have a role in the church. [Lewis:] Archbishops from Africa get up and not only denounce gay people but claim that they have none in their, in their countries, you know what I mean? Homosexuals, lesbians, whatever name you call us, LGBT, we are everywhere, in all parts of the world. [Billy:] Davis Mac-Iyalla was compelled to speak out in response to his archbishop's inflammatory rhetoric. Now living in exile, Mac-Iyalla traveled to the U.S. earlier this year to tell his story. [Billy:] His activism has resulted in smear campaigns, jail time, and even death threats. [Lewis:] Akinola and his crowd have been supportive of legislation in Nigeria which makes even having tea with a gay person in public a criminal offense. [Robinson:] Good afternoon. [Congregation:] Good afternoon. [Robinson:] Welcome. [Billy:] Mac-Iyalla's visit to the U.S. has allowed him to forge alliances with progressives in the Episcopal Church. There's more power now in the churches that disagree with us. The churches just have more voice, have more money, there's better organizing, I think, from the right of the church here in the U.S., with churches around the world and so there's just a lot more clout. [dramatic music] [Billy:] In Tanzania earlier this year, archbishops of the Anglican Communion outlined their demands for the Episcopal Church. One, that they stop ordination of gay bishops. Two, stop the blessing of same-sex unions. And three, allow conservatives their own leader separate from the American presiding bishop, also known as "alternate pastoral oversight". The House of Bishops decided to reject the Primates' plan for this alternate oversight and the other aspects of the, the plan and, um, and that had left the movement stymied. At this point the situation is so volatile that anything is possible in the next three to five years. [Brewer:] And there've been plenty of liberal leaders who have said, "if you want to leave, go ahead and go." Because the points of divide are so deep between us. There is a division here that is an intractable division, and there doesn't seem to be a way through it or a path forward within the American context. You can't really expect a church to prosper when it's based on being against something, you know what I mean? And, and that's, and they have been against those ordination, some of them, against Gene Robinson's consecration. [Lewis:] I think the movement has a total blind spot or lack of understanding of homosexuality period. In the late 1950s and early '60s, Greenwich Village was a haven for outcasts, beatniks, an exciting meeting place for gay folks. It was a time when you might hear Bob Dylan playing at a nearby coffee house. Or see Allen Ginsburg walking along Christopher Street. It was during this vibrant period that public gay theater was born at magical and virtually hidden little places like Caffe Cino. [Robert Patrick:] The Cino was a religion, a philosophy, a community, a school, a monastery, and it was building a culture. [Billy:] In the late 1940s, Joe Cino left Buffalo for New York City's Greenwich Village. He dreamed of owning a coffee shop where friends could hang out and have poetry readings. After years of saving, the Caffe Cino opened at 31 Cornelia Street in 1958. The main attraction at first, was the coffee and conversation. But once a tiny stage of loosely strung together milk crates was set in the room, burgeoning artists, many of them gay, began to flock to the cafe and a one-of-a-kind theater was born. The Cino was the first off-off-Broadway theater and now people are calling it the first gay theater. And I think they're quite right in both cases. ["Do You Believe in Magic" by The Lovin' Spoonful] [Marshall Mason:] The Caffe Cino was a place where people could come and be themselves and be comfortable with whatever their sexuality was. [Rossini's "Largo Al Factotum"] [Patrick:] Before the Cino, the gay characters we knew about were either, uh, villainous lesbians preying on girls in vampire movies or silly, silly hat designers and choreographers. There was no gay movement at the time. We're talking, you know, way before Stonewall. [Billy:] For the first time ever there was a place for writers and artists to battle these blatant stereotypes. Spurred on by the cafe's openly gay and fiercely charismatic owner. [Patrick:] It was a fairyland atmosphere. And in the depths of the fairyland behind the steaming coffee machine... was Joe Cino. What released us at the Cino, was Joe. How did Joe create that atmosphere? He was a free spirit. For Joe, the doors were always open. Do your own thing.  Do what you have to do. Do what you want to do. [Billy:] Joe was the heart and soul of the café, encouraging anyone who entered its doors to let their creativity flow as freely as the coffee, whether they had ever thought of doing theater or not. [Patrick:] I've always said, "if Joe ran a bowling alley, we all would have been champion bowlers." It happened that he ran a theater. So we wrote plays. ["Feeling Good" by Nina Simone] [Lanford Wilson:] Through the incredible freedom of being able to be yourself in that place and outside that place and in your work. Everybody who came there had been suppressing some part of themselves, some vital creative part of themselves, which they could express at the Caffe Cino. [Wilson:] You could just do anything and it made me want to just experiment like crazy. [Mason:] Joe was very liberal. It was just, you know, anything that you felt good about, you just, "Come, put it on." [Doric Wilson:] I'd offered my script to Joe, and Joe said, "What's your sign?" And I said, "I don't know." And he said, "Well when were you were born?" I said, "February 24th." He said, "Uh, January 17th." I said, "No, no, February 20." "I said no, January 17th. That's when your show opens." And he'd start each show by hitting the wind chimes and bells and then announce the show. [stylized announcement:] A-ladies and a-gentlemen. Welcome-a to magic-a time at a-de Caffe Cino. [Play narrator:] The action of the play takes place in a part of paradise commonly called "the garden district". The time is after Adam's usual afternoon nap. [clapping] Lots of wonderful theater was created, you know, in between coffees and sandwich making. [Patrick:] What made the Cino new, what created off-off-Broadway, was its permanency. It wasn't just some kids hiring a loft one night to do an experimental show. Every bloody week of the year you could come here and see experimental theater, which we were doing for free. We don't care if anybody pays to see it, we've got to write it and produce it. [Patrick:] Joe Cino often said, "Play it for the walls," if no one was there. I don't think I ever did better work. [Billy:] Seminal works from the theater's next wave of playwrights, actors, and directors began pouring out of Caffe Cino, and garnering both critical and popular attention. [Mason:] John Guerrer and Sam Shepard. [Patrick:] Lanford Wilson with "The Madness of Lady Bright". [Lanford Wilson:] Bob Dahdah who did "Dames at Sea!", [Mason:] a wonderful musical that introduced Bernadette Peters. [Patrick:] Tom Eyen. It took Tom 20 years to free himself of the seductive freedom of off-off-Broadway and write "Dreamgirls". ["Dreamgirls" by Original Broadway Cast ] [Billy:] What had begun as fun and experimentation for the mostly gay artists quickly grew into something more socially relevant. [Hoffman:] Caffe Cino was different from other places for gay people in that, for one thing, in those days there weren't too many places that gay people could write for. Honestly. Two, it wasn't doctrinaire. It isn't like it, it had any kind of agendum about being gay. [Patrick:] When I was acting in my first play "The Haunted  Host", we acted right among the tables, you know. And I leaned on the customer's table and there was a young man sitting at the table with an older man and woman. And as I leaned there, he said, "You see him, Mom? You see him, Dad? That's why I brought you here. I wanted you to see him. I'm like him. I'm a homosexual." We were, I think, somewhat aware that we were revolutionary. You know, we were doing something that nobody else did, that nobody else could, could do really or could put up with. [Billy:] But by the end of 1966, the success that the café had reached created a frenetic pace that was clearly taking its toll on Joe. I think there was always a show up doing two shows or three shows a night, if you'd believe it. On the Friday and Saturday was three shows a night, the last one was one o'clock in the morning. [Billy:] At the same time, the drug scene of the '60s encroached and things began to fall apart. People came in and brought speed. And people got very crazy and hooked and sick. People were getting physically and mentally ill. The very wildness of, of the Cino was its undoing. ["Heroin" by The Velvet Underground] [Billy:] In January of 1967, Joe's longtime lover Jonathan Torrey died tragically, pushing Cino over the edge. On the morning of March 30th that year, Joe was found by a friend on the floor of the Caffe Cino, bleeding to death from drug-induced and self-inflicted wounds. He was rushed to the hospital. He shouldn't have made it to the hospital. He lived for three or four days. There was a most amazing line to get - to give blood. When they told me on the phone that Joe was dead, I was suddenly up in the air watching myself. [Magie Dominic:] A lot of people were completely and totally devastated and didn't come in the café again because the memories were just more than they could handle. I think the heart of the place left when Joe Cino committed suicide. [Billy:] Without Joe, the Cino continued on with the help of friends until 1968, when it fell victim to the fines from cabaret license laws that were now being more rigidly enforced on Greenwich Village coffee houses. But even after it closed its doors, the Caffe Cino's influence on theater was immense. [Dominic:] We're here at the Lincoln Center Research Library for the Performing Arts in New York City. In the Billy Rose collection there's incredible documentation of the Cino years. Here's Joe. These are the actual original posters that were in the café window. These were scripts. But this is part of the fabulous collection that's here. We can't recreate the past. The past is gone. But we can carry the traditions forward. [Patrick:] Pretend he's not there and he'll go away. This is the Cino. And Joe used to live behind there. [Doric Wilson:] I want to welcome you back. [Patrick laughs] [Doric Wilson:] I couldn't carry a bigger bundle! [Patrick:] I love it. Okay. [conversation] [Hoffman:] It was an experience that bonded us probably forever. [Hoffman:] Oh hi, are you open to any karma [?], that they made here? [Robert Heide:] Good to see you. [Doric Wilson:] The wall back there, for the kitchen, is where the old counter used to be to make the cappuccine. [Doric Wilson:] It's amazing how it stayed with me. By 1974, I had a theater based on the Cino that was called TOSOS that was doing new gay plays. And my whole life has been dedicated to that. [Patrick:] It's smaller! They built walls in. [Man:] This is like a high school reunion. [Doric Wilson:] Hey, we're larger! Because of the Cino, there were now 300 off-off-Broadway theaters. The entire stage in the middle of this room was a bed at one time, a huge bed. [Hoffman:] My play, "Good Night, I Love You" is staged in the loft up there and the loft up here and the audience in between, like ping pong game. [Lanford Wilson:] I had no idea that we were the beginning of  independent theater in America, but we really were. Duh, who knew? Of course out of Joe Cino's work came the Café La MaMa. And there came a point when I needed to create a theater. And we started Circle Rep and sort of got to be, you know, kind of a off-Broadway institution. If it wasn't for the Cino, the chain of events would not have happened that made it possible for "In the Life". Uh, Harvey Fierstein, Quentin Crisp, uh, "Angels in America", "Dreamgirls", "Fifth of July", "As Is", my play, "Kennedy's Children",  "Hair". All of these things are the flower of the Cino. [Hoffman:] I never would have been a playwright without the Caffe Cino. I never certainly would have written about gay subjects that freely. That was the kind of empowerment that the place gave us. We were no longer victims. ["Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" by The 5th Dimension] [Judith Light:] Happy sweet 16, "In the Life". Hi, I'm Judith Light. You're watching "In the Life". The last two stories looked at rules: rules of the church; and challenging the rules of public theater. But there are also personal rules we live by, one's philosophy for life. This next story takes us into the kitchen of one of America's toughest and most charismatic chefs, Josie Smith-Malave, where she will share her approach to life and how that feeds her passion for the art of cooking. [church bells in background] [Josie Smith-Malave:] Perfection. Warmth. Boldness. Seasonality. Community. [laughter] For me, that describes my love for food. That's why I'm a chef. More, more, you know. [upbeat music] [music lyrics:] Now everybody I've ever talked with agrees, that your self-image is important. [Smith-Malave:] You have to get creative and you always have to be thinking, thinking, thinking. [music lyrics:] But what we're going to do now we're going to look at some very specific steps which you can take to make absolutely certain that your image is good and getting better. [Smith-Malave:] So here we go. Now it's smokin', right? So here we go. Oh yeah, baby. Oh yeah. It's all about the fire. When we were kids growing up during dinner my father used to play audio tapes, [voiceover:] inspirational, motivational tapes. How to achieve goals and setting goals, short term then long term. You cannot panic. There's no panicking in the kitchen. We have these incredible lessons. His lessons were all about being able to stay positive in front of any challenge, in front of any obstacle. My father, he's been a very big part of this positive outlook that I have. [phone ringing] [Man on phone:] Jay Smith. [Smith-Malave:] Hey Dad. [Smith:] Hey Miss Josie. [Smtih-Malave:] How you doing? [Smith:] Pretty good. How's it going? [Smith-Malave:] Whatchu up to? Are you busy? Did I catch you at a good time? [Smith:] No, I'm, I'm just kicking back here in the Starbucks. [Smith-Malave:] All right. [laughs] [Smith:] Having a little coffee latte. [Smith-Malave:] Ohh. [both laugh] [Smith-Malave:] For my father growing up in the South as a Filipino-American, it was during the times of a lot of discrimination  . And if you weren't white, then you were Black.  He was an Asian man, so he was Black. They'd wait for him after school and beat him up, and then he'd have to walk home with his beat up butt. These are stories that when he tells me about his discrimination, I share with him my discrimination. And it began as a woman. "Just being born as a woman, Dad, has nothing even to do with me being a lesbian." You know, you're gonna get bullied around, but don't let 'em see you cry. I - you probably will. I'm not saying, "don't cry," but just don't let them see you cry. Okay? Take a break, go to - run to the bathroom. You know what I mean? And then wash your face and then come back and then just go, you know, put that helmet on! And just, you know, like rhinos. That's it, like rhinos! [laughs]  You know? That's right. I guess, uh, developing that thick skin in the kitchen really helped me to deflect a lot of these stupid comments and a lot of lesbian comments and, "Hey, so can you give me pointers?" and, uh, that sort of thing and I'm like, "Oh honey, I don't think I could give you pointers." I give  you pointers, "Why don't you lose weight?" [laughs] [Smith-Malave:] I grew up in a Baptist Christian home in Southern Florida. When most kids were hanging out in the streets, my parents had us in the church. To me, it was very cool and uplifting. And I give a lot of credit to the church for who I am, but it was very difficult coming out of the closet. I was tormented with the idea that I was going to burn in hell. [laughs] It was also a very difficult time for my family. My father, he goes to church every Sunday. And he's taught in his church that, you know, "homosexuality, homosexuality, homosexuality, homosexuality is wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong." And then here he has his gay daughter. He felt that he'd failed me. That he didn't bring me up the right way. My mother thought it was her fault too. "You know, why is my daughter a lesbian? I've always taught her how to put on makeup. I've always done her hair and got her nails done. And... what did I do?" So, I'm 15 years old and I moved out. No one kicked me out. I, I just moved out. I was very confused, afraid, and I have to get a job. I was working in the restaurants as a waitress and I would always, you know, taste the food, talk to the chef, bother and bother and bother 'em about teaching me how to get on the line and cook on the line. So food became my creative outlet. Coming to terms that I'm a lesbian [laughs], it's taken some time. And I moved to New York to define that side of me. ["My Humps" by The Black Eyed Peas] Living in Miami, I felt I had to wear lipstick. I had to wear my hair long. I had to dress with heels and just be so girly if I - in order to be even accepted as a lesbian on the scene. The truth is, I moved to New York because I knew that it just couldn't be like that. I wanted to know that if I wanted to wear lipstick, it was because I wanted to wear lipstick. If I wanted to wear a dress, it's because I want to wear a dress. So I came to New York to define myself, and I found that I am a lesbian. Um, there's no getting around it. But more than a lesbian, I'm a woman. ["What It Feels Like For a Girl" by Madonna] Stunning, talented, warm, my inspiration. Caitlin has been my muse. She's an incredible human being. [Smith-Malave:] There they go. [Caitlin Lewis:] Yep. [Smith-Malave voiceover:] She taught me some very important lessons about relationships. One of the things that I, I learned with Caitlin and it started right in the beginning, we got into a little argument one day and I blurted out and blasted at her something that was very inappropriate. And she told me, "If you ever talk to me like that again, I will leave you." If I get excited, I get loud. I'm very intimidating and most people cower to my, to my roar. Not Caitlin. I think that's where the respect started. ["Feurige Herzen" Swiss music and cooking noises] Delicious. ["Feurige Herzen" Swiss music] [Lewis:] I consider myself a fairly decent untrained cook, but apparently there's lots of little technical things that I don't do correctly and so she tends to correct me a bit. And it's better just for the relationship, for us to be separate in the, in the kitchen. Which is why I'm in here picking herbs and she's in there making the fabulous dinner. ["Feurige Herzen" Swiss music] [Smith-Malave:] Hi guys! [Smith-Malave voiceover:] You know my friends are my, my family away from home. [Smith-Malave:] We've been friends since we were in sixth grade. [Woman:] Miss Bartendah! [Offscreen:] This is so much of a better like [...] [Smith-Malave:] Family is about having each other's back. It's  about not judging. It's about just unconditional love. My parents, now, they both understand. I mean, my father, he said, "Josie, I'll be honest with you. Out of all the kids, you're the one I don't worry about." My mother, "Out of all the kids, you're the one I don't worry about." [kiss noise] They just now know that I have been true to myself all of these years. And along the way, I have taken all of the lessons that they've taught me, about life, Okay. [Smith-Malave voiceover:] achievement, struggle, keep on movin' on. So, I think that with my family I've learned, there's always gonna to be moments, heated moments, 'cause we're family. It's not like a relationship where you go, "Okay. You know what, guess what? We're broken up and that's it. Done." No, this is my family. That's my blood. So we work through our differences. Now we have good communication. I talk to my dad a lot and he understands what's going on in my world. [Smith, on phone:] So, uh, how's the family? Miss Caitlin? [Smith-Malave:] Caitlin's okay. She's working at the cheese shop, you know. Yeah. [Smith:] What about the, the pets?  The dogs and all that good stuff. [Smith-Malave:] Uh the dogs are good. [Smith:] I call it the "Josie zoo". [Smith-Malave:] My zoo. Yeah my zoo's fine. [Smith-Malave, on-screen:] Yeah. Good catch, Oscar. [Smith:] Anyway, just continue doing what you're doing, honey. I'm proud of you. All right. Well, thanks Dad. [Smith unintelligible] [Smith-Malave, voiceover:] So we've come a long way from the day I moved out of my house. Americans seem obsessed with beauty and staying young-looking. Turn on any commercial TV channel and you're guaranteed to see an ad making you feel like you should and could look younger, thinner and more glamorous. Advertisers make that promise and more often than we'd like to admit, we believe it. In this next story, we profile a documentary that takes a look at aging in the gay community through the experience of Lulu, a San Francisco-based drag performer. When celebrities get work done, you only get to see the before and after. In this film, Louis, or Lulu, very bravely lets us witness the before, the during, and the after. [Marc Huestis:] I had actually been ruminating for quite some time about doing a movie about aging, being, you know, growing older. But, you know, I don't want to do the whiny kind of, [groan] "Oh it's so horrible." You know.  [laughs] ["Super Freak" by Rick James] With the help of modern surgery, be able to return to those days of eyeliner and glamour. And be the star again! Come out and be the drag queen that I am! [film flicker] [Lulu, sung:] Come on you children, gather around. Gather around, you children. [club music] [Huestis:] Lulu has it, the entertaining quality but I wanted to get a sense of vulnerability too, which was tough because he's such a strong character, it's hard to get to the heart. Somebody told me, "Lulu, you're not dressing your age. You gotta start dressing your age.  You're not dressing your age." What the hell? Now there's a dress code that I've gotta follow as I step into older years? Lulu would not talk about his age, what age he really was. And it was just killing me. It was my decision to say that I'm between 40 and 60. The numbers for me just goes like this. It's a number. I don't want to hang on to it. Some people want to hang on to it. ["Glamorous" by Fergie] [Huestis:] I love beauty. I love glamour. Who doesn't?  You know? You know, you watch movies to see glamorous, beautiful people. But also there's a price to it, you know, both literally and symbolically, psychologically, and, and psychically. [Moroccan-style music] Hi, Dr. Harvey. [Robert Harvey:] Hello, Louis. [Lulu:] How are you? [Harvey:] Good to see you again. [Harvey:] When I first meet a patient, I, I do try to, uh, understand them as a whole. I think that a lot of people have a fear of growing older or appearing older or appearing older than they are. [Lulu:] Well, I got a letter from a friend of mine who was very supportive and now seems to be supportive against this decision. I wrote the letter to Lulu because I think it's very important that people not be set up, thinking that by changing their external reality it's going to change their internal reality. ["The Millionaire's Holiday" by Combustible Edison] [Lulu:] It's kinky kabuki. Well this is what happens. This is what the reality of it is. Real glamorous, huh? This is the part where you don't see. Where all the stars are healing in the hotels right now. In their private hotels. I ain't got no private hotel. This is it girl. I'm scooping my own ice. [Lulu:] Eight days? [Harvey:] Eight days, nine days? [Lulu:] Yeah. Nine days. At nine days, what do you think, at nine days? [Harvey:] I think you look terrific. [Lulu:] Do you think this is pretty good for nine days? [Harvey:] Very good. [Lulu:] How does that look? Good? [Lulu:] Before. After. [Harvey:] Looks like father and son. [laughs] [Lulu:] We're back on stage again! [people in group:] Cheers! The only drag queen who lived. [Lulu, voiceover:] All my friends know. Nobody mentions face lift to me. Having plastic surgery, I was hoping maybe it might change my sex life, but, um... and nothing changed. Nothing really changed at all. I like mentioning my age now to just rub it in to people that I am 54 years old. And, uh, that, you know, they kind of like go, "Wow!" [Huestis:] You know there's so much phobia around growing old. I remember turning 40 and how horrible it was, you know, and it's a society of vanity. So i'm hoping to - that the film at least alleviates a little of that pressure. Please welcome the very old [laughter] but freshly, freshly beautiful - you're gonna look - she's gorgeous. I hope that, uh, I don't live to be this old. No! I mean, I hope I look this good when I'm this old. Please welcome now to the Trannyshack stage for the first time, it's Lulu! [crowd cheers] [chanting:] We love Lulu! We love Lulu! We love Lulu! We love Lulu! [Lulu:] 80 years old, I'm gonna be living a wild life. And I hope that my body will be healthy enough to allow that to happen. I wanna keep dancing. I wanna move and I'm gonna rock in a rocking chair, I'm going to be wearing platform shoes at the same time. [laughs] [whispers:] Life! ["E Se Anche Lo Racconto Chi Ci Crede?" by Nino Rota] Now Lulu could afford the cost of plastic surgery and as you saw did it primarily for cosmetic reasons. But what if you can't afford it and your reason isn't just about looking younger. Imagine that you were born biologically male but inside you completely identify as female. Not all transgender people want to alter their bodies, but many do. It's about aligning your physical appearance with your internal identity. For transgender women who are low income, the ability to pass as a female can make the difference in being able to simply get a job, put food on the table, or avoid the very real threat of violence. The stakes are higher for trans women and not surprisingly, some women will go to some pretty extreme measures to enhance their feminine appearance. [parade noise] [DeParis Perez:] This was our second annual solidarity march. [...] discrimacion! No! It's a march against oppression. A march against injustice. [Elizabeth Rivera:] I was able to walk down openly, down Knickerbocker, Bushwick, Brooklyn, my neighborhood, my city 'cause, you know, I'm a Bushwicker. I'm born in Brooklyn. [Perez:] Most of the time we are targeted for being who we are, for expressing ourselves. This right here is not what it's supposed to be. [Perez:] Some of the girls that I've known they had bottles thrown at them around here. [Joi-Elle White:] It's kind of rough out there. I mean, you got the Jamaicans, West Indians, but all West Indians basically and they're not too friendly with transgenders or even people "in the life" period. When I was transitioning, I went through a lot. You know, even with adults, even with kids. You know, say, "Mommy, what's that? Mommy, what's that?," right in my face and the parents wouldn't say nothing to them, you know. But that gave me more strength to be myself, to be open, and also to try to look more passable. [parade noise] ["Barrio" by Orishas] [Stefanie Rivera:] I've always felt that I was a girl in the wrong body, I guess, because I used to sit in my room, in the dark, praying literally to God that when I go to bed and I go to sleep that when I wake up, I can look in the mirror and I can see a girl staring back at me. I feel that I'm feminine. And I feel that I'm beautiful. But I don't feel that I'm as passable as I could or should be. I need people to be able to see me as I see myself. [Billy:] Taking hormones is a way to transition a body physically and chemically from masculine to feminine, to reflect the true nature of the person on the inside. but obtaining a full hormone treatment of anti-androgens and estrogens especially with a prescription from a doctor can be difficult. [music] I asked my doctor for them and he was like, "No, I'm not going to give you that. You have to go to to an institution." [Perez:] That's what forced me to go into the black market. I did buy like three times in the street. [Stefanie Rivera:] I would get the Premerin patches. I would get the estrogen cream. I would get the pills. I was overdosing on that stuff. [Elizabeth Rivera:] When you go to a black market hormone spot, you're not being prescribed those hormones. And technically when you're on a hormone regimen, you are supposed to have an endocrinologist monitoring your liver and your physicality to make sure that the hormones are doing what they're supposed to. You are putting yourself at a risk to have some type of physical breakdown. I myself had to have my gallbladder removed, five, six years ago. I thought to myself, maybe I overdid it with my hormone  intake. Maybe I was overdosing myself. [White:] I smoke cigarettes. It's a risk there. I take hormones. That's a risk there. Everything you do is a risk. Is a risk even walking outside the door. [Elizabeth Rivera:] It's hard when you are a trans woman and you have certain features about yourself that may not be the norm of what a female image is supposed to look like. So then you start thinking of ways of going about feminizing yourself. Doing it in ways that is going to be low cost even if it means, okay, I don't have thousands of dollars to go see a cosmetic surgeon.   But, you know, I have a couple hundred. Maybe I can go see this girl down the street and she can, you know, pump me with silicone in her living room. [Elizabeth Rivera:] I was interested in possibly getting pumped. I wanted to do the research around it and I wanted to make sure that I educated myself around what are the consequences. Okay? [Person from audience:] That's silicone? [Elizabeth Rivera:] This is silicone. 100% industrial grade silicone bought from a hardware store. And guess what? If I was a silicone pumper, I'm going to take this home, put it in a jar with a little bit of baby oil, mix it up, make it nice and loose, okay? And start calling up the girls for a pumping party. Okay? There's a lot of risks behind this. [Billy:] Free-form silicone is not contained in an implant. It is pumped with a syringe directly into the tissues of the body to achieve an instant feminine form in the cheeks, breasts, or buttocks. [White:] I decided to get work done, get pumped, basically because for a long time I was - felt... okay, I was doing good. The pass before was good. At one point. But I always said, "you can always enhance." I want it like body body. I'm Puerto Rican and I've always felt that women with curves is more attractive. I went to this person and she got these, like, big syringe needles, like huge. I had to lie like on a table, collapsible table, that they use for like massage or something, and I had to sit there for a while, while she was pumping this stuff and I could feel it separating like the tissue from - and it just, it was very painful. And what she does so that it doesn't leak and you don't do any like strenuous movements or any sharp movements, she puts crazy glue on the holes of the puncture holes where the syringe needles were to keep it from leaking. She did a fantastic job on me. I have no complaints at least thus far. But the person that did do me was responsible for certain cases that went really bad. And one of them, being a girlfriend of mine, she had had her  breasts filled with this liquid form of silicone, and she wound up having a pulmonary embolism and she was hospitalized and she almost died. [Elizabeth Rivera:] When you're a trans girl and you want to be  accepted as a woman you do just about anything to fit that mold, especially if you're a young kid who's homeless and unemployed and all you have is the money that you make off of sex work to basically survive off of. Then, you know, the silicone pumping doesn't seem such, like such a bad idea. [Perez:] I never pumped myself with silicone but I think it's important for, for a lot of the girls for their self-esteem, for their safety and I think to be more passive. They really don't focus that in five years from now if they pump it in their cheeks it could be down on their jaw. In five years. Um, or if they do it in their, in their buttocks that will drop all the way down. [chanting:] [...] We want justice for the trans world [...] [Elizabeth Rivera:] I think that there are more translators coming out of the communities that are developing them - their, their own skills, around health and whatever else and are putting it back into the community. This is my first year as coordinator of TransJustice. [crowd cheering] [parade noise and "A Quien Le Importa" by Thalia] [White:] My advice to the younger generation: slow down.  Don't come out Monday saying, "I'm gay," Tuesday, you want to be a woman. And Wednesday, you trying to get pumped. Take time, live the life, make sure it's something you want to do. I feel that I did rush it and I would recommend for those who may want to listen to my advice, is to just take it one step at a time, because your life is so much more important than trying to hurry through these hurdles. And you don't want to jump into a swimming pool without looking first whether or not there's water. I'm Michael Billy. Thanks for tuning in and please join us next month. ["What It Feels Like For a Girl" by Madonna] [Song lyrics:] Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short. Wear shirts and boots. It's okay to be a boy but for a boy to look like a girl, that's degrading. Because you think that being a girl is degrading. But secretly, you'd love to know what it's like, wouldn't you? What it feels like, for a girl. ["What It Feels Like For a Girl" by Madonna] [song lyrics:] Silky smooth. Lips as sweet as candy. Navy tight blue jeans. Skin that shows in patches. [Narrator:] "In the Life" is funded in part by: the H. Van Ameringen Foundation. Additional support provided by: the Ford Foundation; and by Arcus Foundation; and these funders; and by the annual support of In the Life members like you. [logo music] [logo music]