Interview with Diana Salameh

Diana Salameh, also known by her stage name Yasmene Jabar, is a trailblazing American film director and stand-up comedian originally from Noxubee County, Mississippi. A true Renaissance woman, Diana's artistic journey has spanned photography, painting, sculpting, acting, and filmmaking. She is best known for directing and producing Desiree: A Ghost Story (2012), a Southern Gothic thriller featuring a trans-led cast and creative team. Born intersex and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Diana's early life was marked by resilience and a deep desire to live authentically. She began her gender transition at 18 and underwent gender-affirming surgery by age 20, overcoming significant social and economic barriers. Diana's life story includes time spent in the drag and underground performance scenes, modeling, and eventually embracing her creative voice behind the camera. Deeply inspired by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, and John Waters, Diana blends fantasy with visual storytelling and often appears in cameo roles in her own films. Off-screen, she is a passionate advocate for authenticity and aging gracefully as a transgender woman. Her life and work continue to inspire others with bold creativity, honesty, and heart.

 

Monika: Diana, welcome to my blog! I'm so glad to have you here.

Diana: Greetings Monika, and thank you for asking me to take part in this interview. I hope you and your readers will have a better understanding of just who I am.

Monika: How would you define yourself - filmmaker, comedy actress, stand-up comedian, or something else entirely?

Diana: I feel myself to be a Renaissance Woman. I've had many artistic outlets over the years: photography, painting, sculpting, acting, and now, I think, film-making. However, that doesn't mean you won't see me doing cameo roles, as Hitchcock did in his films, or reviving a long-dead comedy character if I feel the time is right.
Right now, I love weaving together a collection of images to tell a story. It's just possible that I am exactly where I need to be, and everything I have done up to this point has been a stepping stone.

Poster of Desiree: A Ghost Story, 2012.

Monika: Which directors, or which films, have left their mark on you?

Diana: Hitchcock of course is one of my all-time favorites, as is Charlie Chaplin, John Waters, and Steven Spielberg. They are all so different, but they all create Magic!

Monika: Tell me about your latest film. What's the story behind it?

Diana: Well, of course it's a Ghost Story, one that's set on a decaying bayou plantation named Desiree. We have the heroine Angelique Desiree who goes out to the plantation to find what she just inherited. While there, she discovers dark forces that threaten to destroy her and those around her. We have Ghosts, Demons, Voodoo, something for everybody.
The Star of Desiree is trans actress Alexa Diaz; editing is by trans filmmaker Mary McPherson. It is co-produced by Southern Sisters Entertainment.

Monika: Is there anything autobiographical woven into your films or plays?

Diana: No Monika, so far all of my projects have been a pure fantasy, but that's not to say I wouldn't want to draw from my own life for future projects.

Monika: Let's go back to the beginning. Where did you grow up?

With her oldest brother
Buddy beating her into 
 the snow, winter 1957.

Diana: I was born and grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina on my family's farm.
Monika: When did you first realize being a boy, or a man, wasn't who you were?
Diana: In many ways I had an idealistic childhood, growing up in a rural farming family and community. If I had not been born with my condition, I expect I would have married, had a family, and would still be within that community.
All I wanted growing up was to be a normal girl who would do just that. I always felt myself to be female; I can't remember a time when I didn't feel that way. I actually began my quest when I was 12 years old. That's when I began doing what research I could on the subject of sex change.
I read about Christine Jorgensen about that same age, or at least that's when I seriously began to think about the surgery for myself. This was all secret back then; nobody understood, so the feeling of isolation was extreme. We had no Internet, so information was hard to find.
I remember finding an advertisement for Michael Salem's TV Boutique in the back of one of my father's Playboy magazines. They sent me a list of publications they sold, and one of those was Dr. Harry Benjamin's 1966 book, "The Transsexual Phenomenon," a Bible for the Transsexual.
Monika: At the age of thirteen, you made a dramatic attempt to escape and find a place where you could live as a girl. What happened?

Diana: When I was 13 years old, I ran away from home, driving my mother's VW Beetle and dressed in her clothing. All I could think of was to be somewhere I could live happily as a girl. However, I was still a child, and after 3 days, I drove home and was in a world of shit. My world fell down around me: the FBI had been called in because they thought I had been kidnapped, the local TV reported on it, and kids at school were interviewed by the police.
I was then taken to see my first doctor, who would tell me I could never be female, that it was only a fantasy, and that if I worked hard, I could change the way I was feeling. All my female things were burned by my father, and I was threatened with reform school if I ever even thought of dressing like a girl again.

Monika: School, college, university, for so many trans girls these can be traumatic years, full of discrimination. Was that your experience too?

Diana: I actually loved school for the first couple of years, that is until the boys began to pick on me and call me names like a sissy because I preferred playing with the girls instead of the boys. The rest of my school years are a blur because my body was there but my mind was somewhere else. When I later went to college, I had already transitioned and had surgery to become female, so I didn't experience any problems.

Trick or Treat Time, 1964.

Monika: Let's talk about the transition itself, at what age did it begin, and how difficult was the process? 

Diana: I transitioned at the age of 18; that's when I moved to Charlotte, N.C. I began taking hormones via the black market as soon as I moved. There was a pharmacy on Trade Street that was run by a man named Jack. We would walk in, place $5.00 on the counter, and he would hand us our bottle of hormones. Poor Jack finally went to jail, but that was long after I no longer had any use for his services.

I wanted nothing more than to be a normal girl, but without higher education, I ended up in low-paying jobs and doing Drag Shows just to make enough money to live, let alone save enough for my surgery. I asked my parents to give me the money for the surgery, but they refused. My mother said I would have more pride in earning the money myself, so that was the end of that.
Monika: So how were you finally able to achieve the transition you had dreamed about?

Diana: She said if I want the surgery badly enough, I will figure out a way to earn the money. That's why I ended up, like so many of my Trans Sisters, in the sex industry. I was offered a job in a whorehouse that covered a massage parlor. The owner didn't know my secret, and neither did her clients. I will never forget how scared I was at first, and how surprised I was that nobody could tell I was not a natural woman.
There were other transsexual girls working the streets as well as in other whorehouses, but they were known to be transsexuals, whereas I was keeping my situation a secret. God was looking after me, because I never had any trouble or mishap. I used my time well: I had my breast implants within that first year, and GRS when I was 20. After that, I never went back and left all that behind for the regular life I had always wanted. That's when I went back to school and started modeling.

Monika: Did passing as a woman ever give you trouble? 

Diana: Monika, I was born with a DES intersex condition, which means that, because of hormones my mother was taking during conception, I was already very feminized. I grew no facial hair; my voice was very feminine, and my features were pleasantly feminine. The only facial surgery I had was to straighten a crooked nose after a childhood accident.

5th birthday with the favorite doll Loreta.

Monika: These days, cosmetic surgery makes transitioning possible even in your 50s or 60s. Do you believe that, and what advice would you give to trans women transitioning at that stage of life?

Diana: The best advice I could give anyone seeking transition is to be honest with yourself, take a long look in the mirror, and study what you see. If you need to make changes so you can fit into the world in which you live, then you should do your best to make those changes.
I think the worst thing I see over and over is older Transgender Women who dress way too young for their biological ages. This brings more attention to them, so that people have a chance to pick out their flaws.  If you dress to blend with those around you, you don't want people to notice little things that might give you away as not being a natural woman.

I know that many feel like teen girls when they begin hormones, and that they are going through a sort of female puberty, but we have to fight those feelings and dress age-appropriately, at least in public. But I think it's great that transgender persons can transition at any time in their lives now. Male-to-Females now have FFS that can minimize the male traits that once made it difficult for them to pass after their faces had hardened with age.

Monika: Back when you were transitioning, were there any role models you looked up to?

Diana: Well, of course, there was Christine Jorgensen, then Dr. Renee Richards, Canary Conn, and a local girl back in North Carolina, Angelia Honeycutt, whom I later met on one occasion. After I had surgery, I learned about Caroline Cossey , also known as Tula, the famous James Bond girl. But today there are literally thousands of people to learn from; the road is so much easier now.

Miss Oleen's Pagent, 1975.

Monika: What was the hardest part of coming out for you?

Diana: Knowing that I would lose some of my family members' support and love. It happens to almost all of us; there will be some who don't accept you. I was lucky, because my grandfather, who was the head of my family, accepted me back into the family, so, in turn, nobody shunned me because of him, except for one of my brothers, who considers me dead.

Monika: Being trans in the 60s and 70s versus today, how different was it?

Diana: Well, first off, we had to worry about going out in public. If we were not totally passable, we ran the risk of arrest, because it was against the law to dress in the clothing of the opposite sex. Many of us used ID cards, with our photos on them, saying that we were transsexuals and were under a doctor's care.
I never had a chance to use my card, because I was never asked about my gender, as I passed well enough. Then, it was difficult to find medical care, because there were only a handful of Gender Identity Clinics in the US, and none of them were close to me. I found a doctor who agreed to give me breast implants; I was the first transwoman he worked on. This opened the gate, and many rushed to him for help. He was also planning to do my GRS, but I changed my mind and went to Dr. Biber in Trinidad.

Monika: What do you love most about being a woman?

Diana: The thing I enjoy the most is just being a woman, just being myself. No more hiding who I really am.

Monika: Would you call yourself a feminist?

Diana: Yes and no. I love being a female and letting men be men, but I also want to be treated as an equal with rights of my own.

Diana having fun
in the sun at Lake Norman
about 1978.

Monika: You've been married four times. Did you enjoy being a wife, and what led those marriages to end?

Diana: Yes, I have been married 4 times. And yes, I loved being a wife, but what you have to understand is that, even after surgery, we carry baggage with us that sometimes doesn't let us settle into everyday life with a spouse.
I married my first husband because I wanted nothing more than to just BE a wife, and there wasn't enough love there to keep it going when things got tough. I was 21 at the time, and we only lived together for 2 months before we separated. I could say it was because he drank too much and took drugs, which he did, but if I had been more mature, perhaps I could have tried to help him through his demons. I wasn't, and I didn't; I ran from it.
My second husband, I was crazy in love with him, but so were other girls and he just couldn't keep his hands off them. Here again, if I had been more mature, I might have worked through that, or just waited for him to settle down. Now he is happily married with two beautiful grown sons. How could I have denied him that?
Monika: After being single for nearly fifteen years, you married again.

Diana: The third was after I had been single for nearly fifteen years. This time he was older, and with a family of his own, so I thought it was a perfect relationship, but again it didn't work out, and our union didn't last very long.

END OF PART 1

PART 2

 

All the photos: courtesy of Diana Salameh.

© 2013 - Monika Kowalska

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