Representations of Transgender Domesticity in Mexico City, 1950–70

The first publicized gender reassignment surgery in Mexico occurred in 1952-1954, receiving wide coverage in the media. Although the state media initially celebrated Martha Olmos Romero’s (1933-1972) transition as a national scientific achievement, Mexican officialdom soured on Olmos Romero after she affirmed in interviews that she aspired to motherhood. Mexico’s medical establishment and sanitary authorities attempted to muzzle Olmos, but friendly media—especially tabloids—commissioned photojournalists to construct narratives of femininity-affirming domesticity. These photo-essays and human-interest stories allowed Martha to share her problems, concerns, and aspirations that deployed representations of domesticity and represented her to the public as a heteronormative young woman. These images solidified Martha’s claim to aspirational lower-middle-class femininity. Photo-essays showed her in a modern well-equipped kitchen with all the modern conveniences.

Less than a decade after Martha Olmos’s embodiment of middle-class Mexican urban femininity, other gender-variant individuals published accounts of their lives and shared their interest in transitioning in letters to early transgender publications in the U.S. These accounts featured photographs of transwomen interested in passing unperceived. They also shared photographs of their homes and of themselves hosting social events for their friends. These accounts and photographs allowed gender ambiguous people to contain their gender and sexual transgression by embracing a “domestic ideal” that did not challenge social order and positioned them to deflect charges of sexual deviancy.