Vickie Goodwin loves her husband of 46 years, but it wasn't until after they were engaged that she learned about one of his defining qualities.
"I didn't know that I was marrying someone who was going to take up two-thirds of the closet," she said.
Vickie's husband, Sissy Goodwin, is a Vietnam War veteran and straight man who wears women's clothes. He wears dresses and prefers his skirts to be 17 inches exactly, according to NPR's Morning Edition. And of course he likes his toolboxes to be pink.
Sissy, whose real name is Larry, has adopted the female name after a woman once used it to describe him in a derogatory way. That isn't the worst he has faced because of his choices, though. He was once beat up in front of his house, he told the radio station.
"The guy kicked my teeth in," Sissy said. "To have your son have to witness that was pretty terrible."
A neighbor of his once threatened to castrate him, too, he said.
Sissy wonders if his wife ever thought about leaving him, but she loved him and their family too much to let his habit be an overriding factor. As a matter of fact, Vickie feels similar anguish when people make fun her husband. She wants to protect him, she said.
It's because of that support that Sissy not only refused to succumb to backlash, but also embraced who he is more fully.
Sissy's dad was an alcoholic, but instead of going down that route or trying again to take his own life, he used his wife's support to focus on school and accept his apperance in the mirror.
School has proven to be a pivotal part of Sissy's personality, as he teaches power plant technology at Casper College in Wyoming.
While older people have been critical of Sissy's choices, he finds that younger people are far more accepting. So much so that his students once dressed up for him to show their support.
"They all had pink shirts on and either pink or purple hair ribbons," he said. "The whole class."
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