The premiere showgirl of Carbondale reveals what it’s like to be born a man and live life as a woman

Factoid:Jodie Santana will be appearing at the Upside Downtown on Friday nights beginning in January.

Jodie Santana considers herself one of Carbondale’s premiere showgirls – and with good right.

The curvaceous blonde gives off a vibe of old Hollywood glamour mixed with modern day attitude, fitting for the winner of Miss US of A, Miss Gay Missouri USofA and, most recently, Miss Tri-State Continental 2004.

“I think it’s all about how you see yourself and how you feel inside,” she said.

Santana, 36, has traveled across the country performing with RuPaul, a celebrity drag queen, winning national beauty pageants and all the while maintaining her humble, down-to-earth attitude.

Santana is a pre-operative transsexual, meaning she has not had surgery done to remove her male external sexual characteristics. Her open approach to her choice to live life as a woman illustrates just part of the easygoing person she is.

“I would much rather people ask me questions than just be stupid about it,” she said. “I get up just like everybody else. I pay taxes and own a house.

“This is just a profession, and I happen to be a transsexual that’s a showgirl.”

‘Body parts don’t establish who you are’

Visiting the doctor for the first time to talk about altering her sexual identity was a memorable experience for Santana. She said he told her she would have to start the transformation by living life as a woman from then on, and Santana admitted it was an easy thing to do.

“I always looked feminine anyway,” she said. “People would constantly mistake me for a woman.”

She was then given hormone therapy, which consisted of two different kinds of estrogen pills, three times a day.

“I feel much more balanced as a person,” she said. “My body was starving for those hormones.”

Even though Santana has had breast enhancements, she has chosen not to go under the knife to remove her male genitalia.

“I have not had surgery, and I don’t think I’m going to,” she said. “You get older and wiser and realize that body parts don’t establish who you are.”

She said she has known people who have had the surgery done and who have not been happy with the results, believing they were unhappy because they “jumped the gun.

“Let’s face it, no matter if you have a penis or vagina, you still have problems,” she said.

For the most part, Santana has not had many bad experiences dealing with her sexuality. On the rare occasion she has, those instances have usually been with a woman.

“It’s hard to accept. Let’s face it. I’m pretty voluptuous compared to most women,” she said. “I think some women tend to feel a little insecure, more so than men.”

Her advice for people who choose to be what she called “ignorant” is to try and understand the difficulty of her life.

“I tell them to walk in my shoes one day,” she said, “feel what it’s like to not know who you’re supposed to be or if it’s right.”

A misconception she believes most people have about transsexuals is that they are sexually deviant. Santana said contrary to that belief, most transsexuals do not want to partake in sex because of the hormones they have to take.

“Some people lose a lot of interest in it,” she said. “But I’ve been lucky and kept mine.”

Santana recalled another incident where a man told her he did not like what she was. So she extended an invitation to the man.

“Come to just one of my shows, and I guarantee by the time it’s done, you will be very entertained for $3,” she said. “If you’re not, then I will give you your money back.”

The man accepted and was completely taken aback after the show.

“By the time the show was done, he came right back up to me and said he had never had so much fun or seen so much glamour in Southern Illinois as he had at this bar,” she said.

The hardest struggle Santana said she has gone through has been realizing that she did not need a man in her life.

“That was the worst part of my life-boyfriend situations,” she said. “No gay man wants to be with me because I look like a woman.”

A Small Town Girl

She grew up in Cambria, right outside of Carbondale, a town with a population of 1,330.

“I’m just a kid who grew up in a small town,” Santana said. “When your teachers tell you, ‘You can grow up to be anything,’ it’s the truth.”

She said she was lucky she realized she had a choice at a young age.

“If you don’t feel comfortable in your body, you can change it,” she said. “I know this for a fact because I was lucky enough to be able to do it.”

Being the second youngest out of six children, Santana said she spent the most time with her mother and sisters.

“I learned makeup and everything from them,” she said. “I look up to my mother because she is spiritually and emotionally my rock. When nobody else was there for me, she was.”

She describes her years at Carterville High School as “pretty normal.”

“Growing up, I would say I was probably the class clown,” she said. “Everybody just didn’t care that I was more feminine than anything else. The kids treated me fine.”

Former classmates can now be seen in attendance at Santana’s shows in Carbondale.

“I think it’s a little easier for those people to accept me because I now live as a woman,” she said.

Santana said there was a brief period of time in her life that she went through a tough depression. She said things were not going well for her and even though she associated with transsexuals, she was not one yet.

“Living in Southern Illinois, you don’t think those things are possible,” she said. “I was just kind of stuck here.”

Santana said her depression only lasted a few short months before she realized it was possible to become what she wanted. She saw other people achieving their goal of transformation and took matters into her own hands.

Choosing to come out in a time when a lot of 20-year-olds committed suicide because they were gay and their parents would not accept them was something she knew she had to do.

“That’s not happening anymore,” she said. “A lot of people now have parents who grew up in the ’60s and who did everything they wanted. Now they have kids of their own, and their attitude is ‘Hey I’m going to love them anyway.'”

When she first came out to her mother, she told her she thought she had a problem.

“I said to her ‘I think I’m gay,'” she said. “She said it wasn’t a problem and that was just who I was.”

Telling her father was more difficult. She had her mother mention it to him because “he was really going to wig out about it.”

Santana admits he had a hard time with it for a while but eventually accepted her. She did not see much of him while she went through her transformation.

She said her father was initially upset because he thought it would be hard to live as a gay in today’s society. She said he was just worried about her and wanted her to have a good life.

“After that, he was totally cool with it and started to see my shows,” she said.

Santana’s road to stardom began when she was 16-years-old. She said she remembers being too young to get into Upside Downtown but was still curious about the atmosphere. So she participated the only way underage teens could – by hanging around outside the building’s entrance. Santana said she could vividly remember her first glimpse at Carbondale’s most prominent drag queen – Blanche DuBois.

“I had never really seen anything like it. Then all of these women started getting out of it. I thought to myself, ‘Why are they wearing so much makeup?'” she said. “Then someone else said they were men, and my reaction was ‘Oh my God, you’re kidding me!’ The next week I was out there dressed in drag.”

After seeing those men dressed like women, Santana realized it was okay to be that way. She became fast friends with DuBois and now considers her family.

“I have more fun with her than I have with anybody else,” she said. “Blanche is definitely my drag mother, and we’re best friends, too.”

Keeping contact with DuBois despite traveling around the country has been easy for Santana.

“There are people I will never forget who have touched my life, and she’s one of them,” she said.

Thinking back, DuBois said she could remember the first time she encountered the young Santana.

“When I first met her, she was a boy. Only 16-years-old,” DuBois said. ” She was just amazed and astonished by us.”

Working with Santana is an honor for Dubois, who says Santana is “a great all-around person” who has accomplished so much.

Santana won her very first pageant, the Miss Two of Hearts, at the Upside Downtown. From then on, she has earned numerous titles and made a name for herself in the showgirl world. She performs at the Upside Downtown twice a week for crowds numbering close to 300 people and said she is very content with her life right now.

“I’ll be honest. This is how I see myself,” she said. ” I see myself as the Showgirl of Southern Illinois. Not as a man, not as a woman – just a showgirl.”

Her advice for aspiring showgirls is quite simple. She advises them to be nice because you never know who you will meet in your life who you may need later.

“You’re going to meet the same people on your way down that you meet on your way up,” she said.

Preparation for a typical show takes Santana around 30 minutes. Her routine includes putting on makeup and jewelry, doing her hair and getting in costume.

The crowd’s reaction begins immediately after Santana walks onstage.

“I think that I have a personality people can see just by looking at me,” she said. “People can tell I’m a pretty outgoing, fun, non-judgmental person.”

And for Santana, the Upside Downtown has been a haven for tolerance.

“We want everybody to feel welcome at this bar,” she said. “It’s not necessarily a gay bar. This is where you can be yourself. You don’t have to worry about if you want to hold your lover’s hand.”

Carbondale has been kind to Santana, who regularly gets recognized by locals.

“I think that for being such a small area, I’m amazed at how well people actually do treat us,” she said. “It’s like we’re stars.”

Santana wants always to be able to participate in drag shows but has recently become interested in promoting pageants in Carbondale. Her first pageant, totally conducted by herself, will the Miss Rising Star at Upside Downtown on Jan. 21. It will be a preliminary contest for the Miss Missouri US of A pageant.

“Who else has a better job?” she said. “I can go out there and be who I want to be and do what I want to do, and they love me for it.”