Jessica Alves

Alves was born as a male on 30 July 1983 in São Paulo, Brazil to a Brazilian mother and a British father.[4] Her father, Roserval Alves, hailed from a family of Europeans who arrived in Brazil in 1940s.[5] Initially the family was in the farming trade but expanded their business involvement to include supermarkets, shopping centres and real estate.[5] When she was young, her grandfather bought her Barbie dolls and allowed her to dress. From a young age—“since the age of three, four, five, six”—she knew she was a woman, played with dolls, cross dressed, and was in touch with her feminine side.[6][7] She feels people should not be defined by gender.[8] She was shy, and bullied throughout childhood.[9] As a teen, Alves had a hormone dysfunction, with too much estrogen causing breast tissue to grow; her other features were also picked on by the bullies.[9][7] Her family has a string of grocery stores in Brazil which has made them wealthy, but as of 2018, Alves has not made any profit relating to the stores.[10]

Alves moved to London at age nineteen, where she studied public relations at London College of Communication.[3][4] Her money comes from an inheritance her maternal grandparents left for her.[5]

Alves has had several surgeries, including nose jobs which resulted in the loss of her sense of smell.[9] Soon after that experience she underwent a surgery in Brazil to inject a gel into her arms to make them look more muscular.[9] She lost use of both arms for a while and the experience compelled her to seek psychotherapy.[9] In 2013 Alves was diagnosed with body dysmorphia — a “mental health condition where a person spends an obsessive amount of time worrying about flaws in their appearance”.[9]

As of 2018, Alves has luxury homes in London and Marbella, Spain, and was a regular presenter on television.[5][10] She has a sizable monthly pension from her grandparents, and is heir to properties in Puerto Banús in Spain that she rents out to tourists.[5] Her net worth in 2018 was estimated at over £30 million.[5] In 2018 Alves was jetting between London and Brazil for work and found that being recognized everywhere—and being asked for selfies—had its downside, and felt a new freedom when cross dressing as Jessica.[10] The idea of transitioning gender identity, outwardly, to permanently being female was put on hold, in part because of objections from her father.[10]

As of January 2018, Alves has spent just over £500,000 (equivalent to $512,784 in 2019) undergoing 103 cosmetic procedures, including injections, 51 of which were plastic surgeries.[11][3] Alves has undergone liposuction, had gel filler injected into shoulders, biceps, and triceps, applies minoxidil topically, has had hair implants and a number of facelifts, wears tinted contact lenses, and has had twelve rhinoplasties.[4] Her first plastic surgery was at the age of 17 to remove gynecomastia.[4] Her first nose job was when she was nineteen, As of March 2020 she has spent an estimated £650,000 on sixty operations to emulate the iconic Barbie doll.[12] Alves recounted that pre-transition she tried to compensate for her lack of masculine tendencies by trying to look more so through the surgeries, "I'd always felt feminine and when I struggled to be manly with my personality, I decided to make my appearance as masculine as possible instead, ... But no matter how much I looked like Ken nothing eased the pain of being Barbie inside."[12]

In August 2018, Alves appeared on the UK television show Celebrity Big Brother as a celebrity housemate. After using the n-word in a conversation about the type of sexual partner she preferred, Alves was given a final warning by producers that if she repeated the offensive language she would be evicted from the house. The incident garnered over 1,000 complaints to regulator OfCom.[13] After another incident, Alves was expelled from the show in the early hours of the morning on the tenth day.[14][15]

In March 2019, Alves released a song with Italian plastic surgeon Giacomo Urtis called "Plastic World".[16]

In January 2020, Alves came out as transgender after three months of living in privacy.[17] She shared that she had always been depressed and felt that as risky as more surgeries were, she needed to transition or she would die.[6][18] During the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic she was separated from her family but reunited with them in June.[6] In July 2020, Alves announced that she had changed her name to Jessica.[19] In August her father died. He was always worried about Jessica dying from a surgery, but they remained close throughout her life.[6]

• Jessica Alves at IMDb
• Jessica Alves on Instagram