Not everyone is perfect. In fact, most people would likely change something about the way they look had they been given a chance. However, most of us learn to love our flaws over time, but there also those who would stop at nothing to reach perfection.
Fulvia Pellegrino was born a male, but she always knew she didn’t fit in her body. As she felt ashamed to admit she was feeling like a woman, she was forced to hide through a great part of her life.
In order to fulfill her parents expectations, Fulvia, who was born Fulvio, married wife Marisa some 32 years ago. During the day, she was a happily married and devoted husband, but during the night, she would visit gay clubs and would put on dresses and makeup at the garages of the clubs so that no one could recognize her.
Eventually, she couldn’t hide her true self any longer. Her cars, her guns, the football nights, and everything else she was forced to do in order to present herself as the perfect guy are now long forgotten.
“It is difficult to grow up with a body which is not yours. You try to mask it in every way playing football, drinking beers, buying American 4x4s and go shooting to feel like a man,” she shared with Mirror. “Instead you understand it is a mask and so you need to throw it away and become what you are.”
The first person Fulvia told about her dream of becoming a woman was her wife. Although it came as a shock at first, Marisa has been very supportive.
Over the years, now 62-year-old Fulvia has spend around $80,000 on surgeries and hormone treatments. She had 150 lip and cheekbone fillers, four breast implants, and two rounds of liposuction, among the rest. Her butt lift surgery alone cost $22,000.
Despite everything she’s gone through, Fulvia is still not satisfied with her looks. “I am not happy with my ‘perfect’ body, because it is not perfect. Perfection is something else.”
Speaking of her relationship with her wife Marisa, with whom she is still together, Fulvia says: “Today Marisa and I are nothing more than two sisters. We live together, we argue like two normal people but not like husband and wife.”
While her two brothers supported her decision to transition, Fulvia’s parents could never accept that their son was now a woman. Her father even tried to force Marisa to sign documents and send Fulvia to a psychiatric institution, but that didn’t happen. When Fulvia’s father passed away, she was forbidden to attend his funeral.
Most of her family and friends want nothing to do with her.
The people from the place where she lives, the Italian town of Peveragno, mock her and make fun of her appearance. “I am now the clown of Peveragno. They point at me, they talk about me, they start inventing stories about me that I am a prostitute,” Fulvia told Barcroft in 2016. “My friends have all vanished — they didn’t accept me.”
Despite all that, this woman is happy to have Marisa’s support and she continues changing her body more and more.
“Plastic surgery is not a drug but it’s something that people like me need. I am not happy with my face and other parts of my body,” she says and adds:“I won’t stop here; I want to go ahead because it’s not perfect. If I reach perfection maybe I will stop.”
For more on Fulvia’s life story and her appearance before all the surgeries go to the video below.
As long as her way of life makes her happy and doesn’t affect her health, Fulvia can have as much procedures as she wishes. At the end of the day, everyone deserves to be happy with themselves.