She was the unexpected star of London Fashion Week. Nicole Gibson took to the catwalk exuding confident, old world glamour in vintage Yves Saint Laurent – belying the fact this was a very modern type of show.
For Nicole was once a boy called Glen. This was not only her debut as a model and the realisation of a dream, but a defining moment in her mother’s life too.
For Jan Callaghan this was proof – if it were needed – that her son no longer existed except in her memories. Her little boy is now a beautiful woman, he has become she, and it’s something Jan admits takes some getting used to.
Stunning model Nicole Gibson, seen left in a fashion shoot before she finally had her gender reassignment surgery last week. Right, Nicole, who was once a boy called Glen, makes her debut on the catwalk during London Fashion Week
‘If I slip up and say he, she’ll kill me,’ Jan says with a nervous laugh, speaking last week for the first time about her experience.
We meet just a few days after that showstopping catwalk appearance – and on the very day that 32-year-old Nicole is completing her transformation by having gender reassignment surgery.
In a world where some parents struggle to accept a child who is gay, this is perhaps the ultimate challenge.
Jan picks her words carefully. ‘You wouldn’t choose this, you wouldn’t choose anything that makes it so hard. It’s your child.’
Speaking last week for the first time about her experience, Nicole's mother, Jan Callaghan (left) said with a nervous laugh: 'If I slip up and say he, she’ll kill me'. Right, Glen, aged seven, as a pageboy at a family wedding
She admits she wept when her son told her he was gay, but only because there would be no grandchildren, no daughter-in-law and no cousins for her elder daughter’s children.
And when she learned that her son wanted to live as a woman, she was incredibly supportive, knowing she must leave her son in the past.
‘I just think Nicole, this is her now. I can’t go thinking down the Glen route. That’s been and gone. It’s very difficult.
‘As a child she was Glen so my memories of her are Glen who was a little boy. But now she is Nicole, she will be forever Nicole. It’s who she wants to be and that’s fair enough. I’m very proud of her.
'People don’t realise how difficult it is.’
Certainly Jan, a retired fashion retail assistant from Horsham, West Sussex, never expected to encounter the transgender world. A sweet, down to earth, woman she married and had Hayley, now 36, and Glen.
The marriage broke up when the children were young and, for the last 25 years, she has been married to John Callaghan, a retired builder.
From childhood, Glen was different. ‘He used to play with his sister’s toys,’ Jan, 60, recalls, hesitantly slipping between masculine and feminine pronouns as she talks.
‘My Little Pony, Sindy – he used to comb Sindy’s hair. That’s the first thing I looked back on and realised. I just thought it was because he had an older sister.
‘She got what she asked for at Christmas – a bike or a scooter – but it was never a football or a rugby ball. She wasn’t interested in sport.
Model on London catwalk just days before gender swap operation :
‘When she was 12 she went to a place called Camp Beaumont in Norfolk. She went with a couple of girl friends but when she got there, they put her in a dormitory with the boys. She was so unhappy she called my best friend as we were on holiday and they drove all the way there to pick her up.
‘It was girls who were her friends and who she felt comfortable with. She could not tolerate being with the boys.’
After her Fashion Week debut, Nicole told reporters that, as a child, she used to ‘dress up in dresses and pretend I was Elizabeth Taylor in the Blue Bird [a 1976 fantasy film] but I told everyone else I was pretending to be a wizard.’
Jan didn’t know about the fancy dress, nor did she know that Glen was bullied at his secondary school, Tanbridge House, where he was given the nickname Glenda the Bender.
Jan knew her son was not the same as other boys but put it down to him probably being gay.
‘Oh I did, yes,’ Jan admits. ‘There were no teenage girlfriends although lots of girl friends.
'She had a very, very close group of girls. From what I can make out they protected her a lot. TV presenter Holly Willoughby was one of his friends at Collyer’s [the sixth form college in West Sussex where Nicole studied English Literature, theatre studies and performing arts].’
Glen came out when he was 18. ‘She first came out as gay which I suppose is the obvious first step when something’s amiss but you’re not sure what.
‘I wasn’t bothered but, until he said it, I hadn’t faced up to it. When he said it, I went and walked the dog and I cried. Not because I minded but for what was never going to be – grandchildren and all that.
‘I didn’t know anybody who was gay. I do now, I know lots.’ Glen began his one and only relationship with a young man called Gary who ran a shoe shop. They were together for four years.
Glen meanwhile was slowly coming to terms with the fact that he was not gay but had been born in the wrong body. He wanted a relationship with a man, but as a woman.
Unbeknown to her mother, Nicole had been paying to see three different psychiatrists. She had also been accepted for NHS funding for a sex change, a procedure which costs between £12,000 and £14,000
He was suffering from gender dysmorphia, or gender identity disorder, when a person instinctively knows there is a mismatch between their biological sex and the actual gender they feel themselves to be.
After Glen broke up with Gary, his feminine side became more pronounced. Jan says: ‘She was in the middle, she was very effeminate. It’s difficult to explain.
‘It was a process – putting on a bit of mascara, then a full face of make-up. She’s 5ft 11in but she doesn’t mind being 6ft 4in in stilettos.
‘It was a transition, not an overnight thing and she started to look really good.
‘It’s difficult to explain without knowing her but she’s a very unusual character, very outgoing, very popular. She’s always been quirky.
‘Horsham’s a small town but everyone knows her. I always felt she was safe there. If she was in London I would have been frightened of her being beaten up or picked on – her voice can give her away.’
It’s the closest Jan comes to admitting the fears she must have felt for her son. As for her own emotions, she refuses to acknowledge them. She had to sit back and watch her beloved son slowly disappear.
In his place a new person – known as Glenny – appeared. By this time, Jan was becoming so worried about the possible difficulties Glenny faced that when he announced he wanted a sex change, two and half years ago, she felt relief rather than despair.
She says: ‘I’d gone round to her flat for a cup of tea. She knew I wouldn’t be surprised. She said, “It’s what I want to be, I can’t live any longer as a male.” I think I wished her good luck. I was quite relieved she knew where she wanted to go.’
Unbeknown to her mother, Nicole had been paying to see three different psychiatrists. She had also been accepted for NHS funding for a sex change, a procedure which costs between £12,000 and £14,000.
She was registered at the Gender Identity Clinic attached to Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, West London, but first had to go on a course of HRT and prove she could live successfully as a woman.
The start of Nicole’s treatment with the female hormone oestrogen resulted in an enormous change in emotion. Jan explains: ‘She cried a lot more easily. She’d cry at an advert, anything, she was very emotional. It’s a long, gruelling process. It’s hard and psychiatry is at the base of it all.
‘They really put you through it. I was only there at one psychiatrist’s meeting and I felt I’d been hit by a truck, and I was only listening. He said they’d only had one suicide.
Glen (above) had gender dysmorphia, or gender identity disorder, when a person instinctively knows there is a mismatch between their biological sex and the actual gender they feel themselves to be
'He said, “It was a girl like yourself. She had a very high-powered job and no one knew she was transgender. Then somebody found out and put it on Facebook. They put it out there and she killed herself. How do you feel about that?”
‘I don’t know if it was true or whether he just wanted her response. She said it would never happen to her because she’d never hidden it.’
A year ago, Glen who had become Glenny became Nicole. Jan says: ‘We were sitting one day and she opened a magazine and there was an article with Nicole Scherzinger, Nicole Kidman and Nicole Richie and she said, “That’s it.”
‘She’s now Nicole Gibson by deed poll. They do prefer you to do that as it’s a part of the commitment to kill off your other identity.’
But by killing Glen, Nicole was also killing Jan’s son. It must have been hard but her first instinct is to protect her child. ‘I don’t know why I gave birth to a boy who never felt like a boy. No one knows why,’ she says. ‘Funnily enough, when Glen was born, I wanted another girl. That feeling was very, very strong.’
And interestingly, Jan could only ever imagine herself bringing up girls. ‘I’m not the sporty outdoors type, I’m more doing plaits and putting on dresses. Because my husband was one of six and five of them were boys I was ecstatic when I had my first daughter.’ So does she miss her son? ‘No, not really,’ she replies. ‘Because in the last ten years she has really evolved in personality. As Nicole, we’ve been a lot closer. And she has so much more confidence.
‘She’s lucky. She’s got the kind of features that can be feminised: gorgeous eyes, gorgeous teeth and lips. She’s not manly at all.’
It seems strange for a mother to talk about her son in such terms but Jan forced herself to put aside any reservations a long time ago.
She says: ‘People don’t realise how difficult it is. She hasn’t been able to have a relationship for years. How hard must it be being attracted to men and not being able to take it anywhere? She makes a joke of it but I’ve heard her crying when she’s come in from a night out.’
According to the charity Trans Media Watch there are 7,341 transsexuals in the UK. It’s a tiny percentage of the population and, while the figure is likely to increase, the transgender world remains out of the range of most people’s experience.
On Thursday, Nicole finally achieved her aim, undergoing a two-and-a-half hour operation to turn her from a man into a woman.
Jan says: ‘There are five other women on the ward who have had the operation done, all from different parts of the country, different backgrounds.
‘I met one of them and her mother hasn’t spoken to her for nine years. I cannot understand any mother rejecting their child.
‘All you want for your children is to be happy in life.’
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