Paris Lees is an English journalist, presenter, and transgender rights activist. She topped the Independent on Sunday‘s 2013 Pink List, came second in the 2014 Rainbow List, and was awarded the Positive Role Model Award for LGBT in the 2012 National Diversity Awards.
Paris was born in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, brought up as a boy, and self-identified as gay in early adulthood. At the age of 16 she committed a robbery, for which she served eight months in prison when she was 18.
She later said “I had dropped out of college. Basically, I had gone off the rails because I was terrified of going to prison. I ended up taking lots of drugs.” While in prison Paris decided to change: “I just thought, ‘I’m this silly teenage boy in a prison cell who has made a huge mistake and I want to be this happy person’.” Paris moved to Brighton to study English at university, where she started to identify as female: “In the space of six weeks I went from living in Nottingham as a boy to living in Brighton as a girl”. She was referred to Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic where she received hormone treatment to begin gender transition.
She became a patient of LTC (previously LBPS) in 2010 when she first came for a Facial Feminisation Surgery consultation. Paris had the surgery in 2012 and you can see how she looks for yourself in her Youtube video shown!
