Credit: SWNS / Leo Macallan
A woman who transitioned to become a man aged 22 says people now tell him he looks like Tom Hardy.
Leo Macallan, 32, was born a female and called Liz but came out as gay to his friends and family in June 2010 - before realising he was transgender in May 2014.
Liz started transitioning a month later - starting on testosterone which gave him body hair and lowered his voice - adopting male pronouns and changing his name to Leo.
He had top surgery a year later in 2015 and has never looked back.
Leo said his friends and family were "happy and relieved" when they saw him for the first time after his surgery.
A woman who transitioned to become a man aged 22 says people now tell him he looks like Tom Hardy.
Leo Macallan, 32, was born a female and called Liz but came out as gay to his friends and family in June 2010 - before realising he was transgender in May 2014.
Liz started transitioning a month later - starting on testosterone which gave him body hair and lowered his voice - adopting male pronouns and changing his name to Leo.
He had top surgery a year later in 2015 and has never looked back.
Leo said his friends and family were "happy and relieved" when they saw him for the first time after his surgery.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 When I was a little girl, my previous name was Elizabeth, but I went by Liz.
00:03 I was always cognitively aware of being male, but when you're young, you don't really get it.
00:08 When I was six, I was six years old, starting connecting the dots of being like, "That's me, but I don't look like that. Uh-oh."
00:20 Titanic came out, and I saw Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Jack, in it.
00:25 I was just like, "That's what I want to be. Everything about that is what I want to be."
00:30 [Music]
00:42 I was brought up Catholic. Not a fun religion. Aesthetically pleasing, yes. Morally fun, no.
00:48 Every night before bed, I would pray that I would wake up and be Jack from Titanic.
00:54 I did that for a very, very, very long time. I don't know if it was because he was blonde,
00:59 or I was just already into the cinematic swelling of emotion, the love story, and him, and being very masculine.
01:07 He was everything that I wanted to be and look like, and that's when the wheels began to turn.
01:13 I was like, "I'm not that, but okay, it's time to do something about it."
01:17 Naturally, my six-year-old brain was like, "God will fix it. Let's ask God."
01:21 Fast forward all these years later, I was starting to take hormones to transition, and I was trying to think of a name.
01:27 I don't know. It's like, a lot of times people will talk about how they pick the name for their kid,
01:32 and they'll say that it's just a windswept feeling of, "That's it."
01:36 So one day, I had just went to see a childhood friend that I had initially watched Titanic with when I was a kid,
01:41 and I was walking home from her house, and I just had this, like, "Phew," and I was like, "Leonardo DiCaprio. Leo."
01:48 To me, it would be a gift to six-year-old me. It would be like, "Here's your prayer being answered, you know?
01:55 You get to be him. We're going to get to be him now."
02:15 My life has been crazy. I've lived overseas for a lot of it. I've lived in Arkansas. I was working as a cowboy.
02:20 I was traveling all the time. I was running away from myself. I was drinking too much.
02:24 And it taught me so much, you know?
02:26 [BLANK_AUDIO]