As you know, Chaz Bono, 42, has been through some changes lately. He started off as a girl named Chastity, the sole offspring of singers Cher and Sonny Bono; appeared on their TV show in the mid-Seventies as a cute little girl with curly locks, waving at the audience; came out as a lesbian in 1995; reconsidered her sexual identity a few years later; started testosterone treatments to become a dude; got a mastectomy to remove her breasts; started lifting weights; can presently curl 25 pounds with each hand; started going shirtless as often as he could, because, damn it, he was a man now and he could; got on the Dancing With the Stars TV program; was variously called a basketball, a penguin and an Ewok; got booted off after six weeks; has continued to stay in the news, what with Warren Beatty’s transgender son calling him a misogynist and him proposing to his girlfriend, Jennifer Elia, 36, atop the Seattle Space Needle, and then breaking up with her in December. It’s enough to make your head spin. What’s not generally known, however, is that, ever since the end of DWTS, Chaz has been studying his finances, adding up the credits and debits, and is pretty sure that within a short while he will finally be able to afford to get himself a penis.
He says he’s never felt better. He no longer numbs himself with painkillers and booze, for instance, and he no longer loses himself for days at a time in video games, though he still likes to play them. He has stopped smoking, too; it was quite an ordeal, until he learned of a certain frightening possibility if he continued.
“The way I had my top surgery done,” he says, “they take your nipples off, and from your old nipples, they make male nipples. They totally re-craft them, let’s say, and then they graft them back on. So it’s a graft, and grafts don’t always heal, and then this transgender guy that my girlfriend met said, ‘I know people who were smokers whose nipples have fallen off.’ When she told me that, that was all the incentive I needed. I went cold turkey.”
And now, to more completely match how he looks to how he has always felt, he’s busily saving money to buy a penis. He hasn’t really talked about it that much before. When anybody brings it up, he typically chuckles and says, “I like to keep my privates private.” But now, why not?
“I could get a phalloplasty, which builds the phallus from a donor site on your body,” he says straightforwardly, “but I’m leaning more toward a metoidioplasty. It’s a procedure that uses what you already have down there” – he means his clitoris – “which has grown larger from the testosterone. You end up with a smaller phallus than with the phalloplasty, but it’s fully functional, it gets erect, and the sensation is all there.”
Does he know how big it’s going to be?
He frowns. “You know, I don’t really. I mean, I’ve never seen one erect. So it’s really hard to say. But, you know, soft, probably about three inches, and it grows considerably. I don’t know what the average size difference is, but when I’m having sex I probably get three or four times larger.” He pauses. “I was in a fairly typical heterosexual relationship, which caused some militant members of the queer community to think I’m reinforcing stereotypes or whatever. Anyway, I think Jen wished I wouldn’t get the bottom done, but she understood my need to.” He shrugs. “You have to understand, though, for me the life transformation has already happened.”
How much is it going to cost?
“It depends. There’s different ways to do the surgery, from real basic to more and more options. It’s like a car.”
Like a car?
“Well, I mean, to break it down, the surgery I want to have, I’d like to have the testicular implants and all of that, and I’d like to be able to urinate through it. I mean, it’s not that big a deal to sit down, but some of the toilet seats in men’s rooms are disgusting. The doctor I want to use is in Belgrade. It’s going to be a little cheaper there. Probably $25,000, maybe $45,000, I really don’t know.”
from Rolling Stone Magazine

Jennifer Elia & Chaz Bono

Prior to the premiere of OWN’s one-hour special Being Chaz, viewers can get a sneak peek as Chaz Bono brings his relationship with Jennifer Elia to the next level.
Standing atop the Seattle space needle, the former Dancing With the Stars contestant offers Elia an engagement ring as a birthday present. “Wow, it’s gorgeous. Thank you so much,” Elia replies.
“Heavy shit man,” she adds with a laugh.
Being Chaz — the follow-up to Emmy-nominated documentary Becoming Chaz — will air on OWN Sunday, Nov. 27 at 8 p.m. Following the broadcast, the network will air the documentary special I Am Jazz: A Family in Transition, which follows an 11-year-old transgendered girl named Jazz.
Becoming Chaz was the first selection in the OWN Documentary Club. Its May premiere attracted an average of 705,000 viewers, ranked fifth in its time period for ad-supported cable channels, and gave the network a 162% increase in key demos versus the year before when it was known as Discovery Health.
from The Hollywood Reporter

Jennifer Elia & Chaz Bono

Chaz Bono may have been booted off “Dancing With the Stars” this week, but he will be back on television next month in a second documentary on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) about his life as a transgender man.
Bono, the only child of actress and singer Cher, is the subject of a one-hour special called “Being Chaz”, which looks at his life with girlfriend Jennifer Elia following his female-to-male sex change, OWN said on Wednesday.
The November 27 documentary, a follow-up to the 2011 film “Becoming Chaz”, will also chronicle Bono’s preparation for his controversial debut as the first transgender celebrity on the TV ballroom contest “Dancing with the Stars”.
Viewers voted Bono off the TV show on Tuesday after six weeks following a bashing by judges of his “Phantom of the Opera” tango. Judge Bruno Tonioli called Bono “a cute penguin.”
Bono, 42, whose inclusion on the dance show triggered a call for a boycott by a conservative Christian group, fired back on Wednesday.
“I got a lot of references from him (Tonioli) about things that would indicate the fact that I’m overweight, you know, a roundness. I was called a basketball, a penguin, an Ewok, and I just didn’t appreciate it,” Bono said on TV talk show “Good Morning America.”
“If you want to critique my dancing and give me some constructive advice so I can try to improve the next time that I’m there, that would be great. But I don’t really know how to be less penguinish, and so I kind of took offense to that,” he said.
Gay and lesbian rights group GLAAD said in a statement that Bono “has helped countless people better understand what it means to be transgender. He should be commended for both his courage and determination.”
When “Becoming Chaz” was first broadcast on OWN in May, it was watched by more than 705,000 viewers, giving the fledgling cable channel one of its biggest audiences since its January launch.
OWN said that it would also broadcast “I am Jazz: A Family in Transition” — about an 11 year-old transgender girl and her family on November 27.
from Reuters