Beauty salon has very different customers

Staring at her reflection, Danielle Oliver checks out her new wavy hair as the stylist gently separates her fresh curls.

But the mirrors in this salon reveal more than just a make-over.

For pretty Danielle was once male and another customer having a nearby manicure is desperately awaiting hormones to become a woman.

Welcome to one of Britain’s few LGBT and cross-dressing beauty salons.

Run by the country’s youngest sex-change patient, Ria Cooper, it is a place where clientele are free to be themselves without judgement.

As Ria styles Danielle’s hair the two chat about how hard it is to maintain their looks.

Both will take female hormones for life and while the medication slows facial hair growth they do not stop growth.

“I’ve spent a fortune on laser hair removal, but it never stays away,” says Danielle. “Nobody wants to go to bed with me and wake up with PopEye,” she jokes.

Ria chimes in: “I wouldn’t let my last boyfriend near the bathroom in the morning because I have to shave every few days. It’s not easy being a girl.”

As the pair giggle wildly, Victoria Wright, 30, has a flash of purple polish removed from her nails before she gets a fake set.

Victoria is at the start of her transition after a failed suicide bid last year.


She became so depressed feeling she was trapped in a man’s body, she tried to remove her male appendage with a knife.

She says: “It’s a massive relief for me to talk to people like Ria and Danielle who have transitioned because it’s easy to feel isolated, that there’s no end in sight.

“I wouldn’t have the courage to walk in to a beauty salon and ask for a treatment without feeling everyone was staring at me.

“There are hairdressers who refuse to style wigs and you have to leave. It’s all so demoralising.”

Ria’s birth place of Hull might seem an unlikely place for such a service, but last year’s City of Culture has a thriving LGBT community.

Ria, 25, said: “The salon is about giving people a safe place where they can come and feel good about themselves, no matter who they are.

“I’ve been through the transition from man to woman with a few bumps long the way, so I can identify with lots of my customers going through the different stages.

“I know how difficult it is to get rid of facial hair, how hard it can be to style a wig and how tricky it is to apply make-up properly when you first start transitioning.”

Ria’s salon offers everything from eyebrow shaping, waxing and fake nails to fillers and botox.

Cross dressers can become someone else for the day with a full make-over -with optional photos – for £500.

Ria said: “We get men from cities outside Hull using the service because most cross dressers do it in secret and won’t go out and about where they live as a woman.

“We help them look the very best they can before they can chose to go out and about and come back to the salon to change before heading back to their every day lives.

“But we encourage customers who aren’t LGBT as well. We want everyone to feel really chilled out and relax and really feel comfortable. I call the salon inclusive rather than exclusive.”

Danielle, 35, says more people than ever before are finding the courage to change.

“There’s been a lot of criticism about transgender being a lifestyle choice but that’s rubbish,” she says. It’s not about choice. It’s about who you are.

“The journey isn’t an easy one though. Something as simple as walking into a beauty salon can be filled with anxiety. As soon as anyone walks in a hairdressers, all heads turn to look and that can be particularly daunting for people who are transitioning.

“I know of transitioning people who have been asked to leave women’s hairdressers and visit the barber. It can be humiliating. Having somewhere like this is great.”

Danielle looks incredible after her seven year journey to become a woman.

But it has cost – emotionally and financially. She split from the mother of her eight-year-old daughter after confessing she wanted to transition, although she says they are now best friends.

And she has just undergone £9,000 worth of plastic surgery in Turkey to lower her hairline, change her jawline and remove a bump from her nose to look more feminine.

She says: “I come from an ordinary working class family who found it difficult to accept I wanted to become a woman.

“I’d spent years emulating male behaviour. As a school boy I’d stick my hands in my pocket, spit on the floor and date girls like all the other lads.

“I carried on dating women as I got older but when my daughter was born I knew I had to be myself.

"I had to be honest about who I really was because I didn’t feel I could lie to her as she grew up.”

Danielle has once experienced the loneliness felt by fellow customer Victoria, 30, of Hessle, Hull, who has had gender identity issues since she was a small boy.

She says: “While all the other lads were chasing girls I was more interested in the style of skirt they were wearing than what was underneath.

“I tried to deny who I was for years until I tried to kill myself by taking a knife to my male parts. It was then my parents found out.

"They were shocked but were more worried about my mental health and were concerned I didn’t feel I could tell them how I felt.”

Since that horrific experience Victoria has forged online friendships with other trans people and is slowly becoming more comfortable with herself.

She is awaiting an appointment with an NHS gender clinic in Leeds which could take up to two years but in the meantime wants to appear as feminine as possible.

“It’s a difficult job to keep on top of it all” she says. “I’m just relieved that there’s somewhere I can come without feeling so self-conscious.”

Ria has had her own struggles through the years.

She became the youngest person in the UK to be prescribed female hormones aged 15 and the upheaval affected her mental health.

By 18, she had twice attempted suicide, turned to dunk and drugs and dabbled in prostitution.

She then halted her hormone treatment and switched back to being Brad for a year after blaming her troubles on her constantly changing emotions, brought on by treatment.

But she now seems happier than ever as Ria. “I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done or the path I’ve taken,” she says. “I’ve grown to accept myself – and now I want to help others do the same.”

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