From Loaded to liberation

Kristen Smyth was once the enforcer at the notorious lads mag in the Nineties. After years of addiction and upheaval and searching, she finally found freedom as a trans woman

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There was a moment around eight years ago that I'll always remember. To most people, it wouldn't have seemed like anything special. Perhaps it would even have gone unnoticed, or at least quickly forgotten. I'd been walking around Soho at the time, wearing some 5in, red block heels - these were serious heels (and I'm already 6ft 1in). I felt confident, womanly - finally, I felt like me. And I noticed a little boy spin around and, almost frozen in wonder, stare intently at me.

I had become used to staring since I transitioned eight years ago. Especially when I visit London, where I grew up, I tend to turn heads. Sometimes it's people like the man in the street who didn't want me to walk his way who notice me, or the mother at Oxford Circus who told her two kids to "get away from that freak" one afternoon. But then there are the stares like that one from a child in Soho.

I recognised his curiosity - certainly I had felt it myself many years ago. "You might just have changed that boy's life," a friend with me at the time turned to me to say.

It had been a long journey to that point, so much of it inhabited by contradictions. Long before I was Kristen, I had been the production editor at 1990s lad mag, Loaded, where I was known as the "enforcer" - the tough one who kept the chaos on schedule. I was there to keep the pages running, keep everything going to get the magazine out while everything (and everyone) was unravelling. Including me.

I hadn't always dreamt of being in magazines, but I did love writing and knew I wanted to be involved in some sort of publishing. I left university in 1989, having spent years living for the Hacienda in Manchester.

That was the start of it: the energy, the club culture, the music.