NASCAR DRIVER BECOMES A WOMAN

"J.T. Hayes won over 500 regional and national championships in go-kart, midget and sprint racing and competed in NASCAR Winston Cup".
Hayes accomplished these races before undergoing sex reassignment surgery in 1994. J.T. Hayes now goes by the name Terri O'Connell, a petite red head who lives with her elderly mother and is working on a clothing line for female Nascar fans. She is also writing a memoir entitled "Dangerous Curves".

O'Connell writes about how she went from feeling out of place as a youth, knowing that she was meant to be female to racing for Nascar and then abandoning it to complete her sex reassignment surgery. She went from a 6 figure salary to selling purses in the Mall. She knew she had to wait a year before she could risk a racing accident. She missed the excitement and felt like her driving career was over.
She took her talent for art and began working on a Disney type store with a motorsport theme.

- I can't imagine how difficult this would be. To be born one sex and to know you are not that, to know you are a woman instead of a man. To have to give up a lucrative career, just because you got a sex change, to become the person you always felt you were. I don't see where getting a sex change operation is any different than say getting lypo. If you've always been fat, but felt like you weren't meant to be fat and you have lypo to allign your self image. So, where's the difference?