For Trans Women, Silicone 'Pumping' Can Be A Blessing And A Curse

Ruby Corado never expected to live past her 30s.

A transgender woman from El Salvador, she moved to Washington, D.C., in the late 1980s to escape the country's civil war. It was a time when AIDS was already devastating an entire generation of gay men and transgender women in the United States. Homophobia and transphobia were part of everyday life, from finding housing or landing a job to facing all-too-real threats of violence.

"Growing up in an environment where your friends are dying, they're getting killed, it's just a matter of, like, 'When is my time?' " she says. " 'When am I next?' That was the whole thing."

Corado quickly got involved in community activism — while also navigating both her transition and learning she was HIV-positive.

"I survived a civil war," she says. "So a part of me was like, 'Well, I survived bullets. Bombs. I can survive this. I can survive the intolerance.' "

Because of complications from her HIV medication, she developed a condition that affects how the body stores and distributes fat tissue. She says it was like her butt was "erasing." At the same time, she was already contending with the pressures of conventional beauty standards. Meeting those standards can be a boon to a trans woman's self-esteem; breaking them can put a target on her back.

But then the first talk of "pumping" slipped into her circles — a procedure where someone will, for much cheaper than a licensed surgeon, inject you with silicone. "Pumping parties" began making their way down from New York to Washington. Everyone in Corado's circle, it seemed, was getting it done.

"So I'm thinking to myself, 'Well, I'm gonna give it a few years,' " she remembers. " 'And if they die — I'm not getting a butt,' " she laughs.

Years went by. The people who had gotten pumped seemed fine. And Corado found