In the new documentary Becoming Lee on TV4 we get an insight into transsexual Lee Christiernsson’s journey from “Snickar-Björn” to Lee – and the support she has received over many years from her ex-wife Karolina.
It was in QX February issue that Lee Christiernsson came out as transgender.
Lee said that for many years she had suppressed her gender dysphoria, that is, not feeling like the gender she was registered as when she was born. For a long time, ex-wife Karolina was the only one to whom she could tell about her feelings:
“I have been able to share all my feelings and thoughts with her. We could have joint make-up and dress-up nights at home to make fun of it. You know, instead of buying pizza and watching a movie, we got dressed up and put on makeup. But I always had to keep the beard, so it never really turned out the way I wanted,” says Lee.
The couple separated in 2018, as Christiernsson felt she needed to find herself.
“We had an open dialogue and [Karolina] said ‘you’re transsexual, there’s nothing more to it’. But even though she said that, I couldn’t take it in. That I, Snickar-Björn, who made a career out of being a handy macho guy, would be transsexual, that was impossible to accept,” Lee tells QX.
“Loved Björn for the person he was”
In the new documentary Becoming Lee on TV4 we not only follow Christiernsson’s journey from Björn to Lee – we also get to see how her relationship with her ex-wife looks today.
It appears that Karolina has been, and still is, a great support for the TV personality.
“I think I felt very quickly, from the moment I met Björn, that he was very fascinated by how I dressed and what I wore,” says Karolina and adds:
“It wasn’t that long later that he introduced and showed that he had high heels and corsets and so on. I loved Björn for the person he was, and then it didn’t matter that much if he wore women’s clothes or not.”
Today, Karolina calls Lee her “best friend”. The make-up and dress-up nights are something they still do because they have similar tastes in this particular matter.
The former spouses were last seen together at Monday night’s QX gala at Cirkus in Stockholm, where they took the opportunity to take a selfie that Lee later posted on Instagram.
“My ex-wife and I had a super nice evening,” she writes in the post.
Part 1 of “Becoming Lee” can now be seen on TV4 play. Part 2 is coming Monday, February 13.
