Man who spent nearly $300,000 to look like a Korean woman has now reverted back to original gender
Emma Guinness
Featured Image Credit: Caters
While the rates of detransition in the transgender community are low, there are some people who decide to revert back to the gender they were assigned at birth.
Case in point, this Brit who spent a staggering $300,000 on gender-affirming surgeries when he identified as a Korean woman, but ultimately decided to live as a man.
Oli London, 33, previously identified 'transracial' - that is, a person who identifies with a race other than their own.
Advert
But after the 32 surgeries including nose and chin surgery he went through in search of 'validation', something in him 'snapped' last year.
He said: "I suddenly realised, the more surgery I have the unhappier I am.
"I used to spend hours in church praying for clarity and then I realised I'd made a mistake."
Reflecting on why he chose to transition, Oli said: "I was born a male and as a kid, I would sometimes dress up in girl costumes with the handbag and the heels.
"The first cassette I ever bought was Cher and I played with Barbie not Action Man, but many kids do that these days.
"When I became a teenager I was teased and bullied for my looks, I had bad acne and a big nose. None of the girls would want to date me, they said I was too much like a girl, I was called feminine.
"These are some of the reasons I think I developed body dysmorphic and ultimately got depressed."
Oli explained that it was his depression that partially saw him become obsessed with Korean culture.
He admitted: "I'd always questioned my identity my whole life.
"When I was 23 I went to South Korea to teach English.
"It's the plastic surgery capital of the world. There's a million procedures performed there every year, there was a pressure for me to change myself there, to prove bullies wrong.
"Initially I fixed my nose, the surgery was quite scary and it went wrong so I had to get it fixed, the first few went wrong and it became an addiction.
"I loved the way Koreans looked so I began to obsess over looking like them, I began to try and use surgery."
But while the changes Oli made to his body made him happy for a time, he eventually realised that, for him, he was acting in a 'self-destructive' way as a result of a mental health crisis.
He said: "When I announced I was Korean I was going through a mental health crisis at that time.
"The reason I wanted to be Korean was I was accepted there. The identity was trying to fit in, I was chasing validation."
Now, London feels happier than ever.
He said: "I knew that in order to find true happiness, I needed to go back to my roots and find the person who had been trapped inside me all along.
"I needed to find the real me."